Cabin Fever
by Chris Kenworthy
Summary: The gang from Roswell have left Earth and are on their way to Sanctuary, where they'll meet the old Queen, Tess, and Tess' son. But flying between the stars takes a long time, cramped in a little ship. Good thing most of them like the company!
1. Chapter 1

Testing, testing, one two three - is this thing on?

Yeah, looks like. Okay. Ship's personal log for Alex Charles Whitman, entry number one.

Let's see... my friends and I have just left the Earth behind, with no idea of if we'll ever be able to come back or when. Our five-month mission, to travel to the secret Rebel base codenamed 'Sanctuary' without being intercepted and captured by minions of the foul upstart Kivar. Yeah, five months in a pretty crowded little spaceship. It's gonna be weird. No matter what Sanctuary is like, we're probably going to be very glad to arrive, just to get out of such tight quarters.

In other news, Max and Liz are now engaged! Apparently he popped the question to her in the airlock as we were lifting off, and gave her a necklace to seal the deal, which fits in with Antarian tradition better than a ring thing. Christin, our shapeshifting hostess, is trying to see if she can scrounge up a promise necklace for Liz to 'give' back to Max, because that's the right way to do things. Christin fusses over Max and Liz particularly, as if she's the alien fairy godmother in their Cinderella story or something like that. Apparently there's some story about Liz being the true alien bride in spirit, but I haven't gotten all of the details straight with that.

Let's see. As soon as Max, Liz, and Christin were inside, and the word came that we'd gotten high enough in Earth's atmosphere that even other alien ships wouldn't be able to penetrate the ship's cloak easily... well, all of the girls made a big fuss over the engagement thing, obviously, but someone pointed out that we needed to get something sorted out for accomodations and not just keep standing out in the ship's corridor. Beyond the crew quarters, there were five small passenger cabins, and ten of us, including the New York contigent. Three of the cabins just had a single bed in them, just about big enough to get called a double, while the others had two seperate, narrower bunks. Kyle, conscious of the fact that nearly everybody but he and Lonnie were couples, and I think he's still a little scared of her, was very insistent that he should get one of the double-bunk rooms with a guy roommate, and same with Lonnie and another girl. But then the question came up, who was the odd couple out?

Max and Liz, pretty obviously, got a cabin together, what with the engagement news and everything. Isabel hesitated only a second and then called the next one - which probably doesn't have as much to do with wanting to sleep with me as being very unwilling to share that much space with her New York lookalike. Basically that was how it came down between the other two pairings, too - who was most willing to stand Lonnie's company. Ava ended up falling on the grenade - she doesn't like Lonnie much, and they've had some reasons for enmity lately - Ava agreeing to work with Michael, Isabel, and Liz to foil Lonnie's plans at the Summit, Lonnie refusing to help Ava and Rath out when they set out to stop Tess, and so on. But they grew up together, and I guess Ava figured that she could put up with the other girl better than Maria, who still pretty much looks at her as the same girl who manipulated Max into going to New York because she needed a king figure.

Christin introduced the crew of the ship too, though I don't remember any of their names or anything like that. Think I've got the job descriptions down pretty well - there's a pilot, a captain, (who also covers as navigator,) an enginner, and a steward/purser. Christin's taken a spot on the crew too, which seems to be more or less 'tactics and communication officer', so there's five of them, (true aliens, crew,) and ten of us, (earthborn, passengers, human or hybrid.)

Speaking of communication, Christin said that they were going to break radio silence in about two hours, (well, less than that now,) to send a signal off to Sanctuary just before turning on the warp drive for the first time. Max, Liz, and Isabel all wanted to sort out some kind of attachment to the message, with an announcement of the engagement, and reassuring Queen Alinda, Tess, and anybody else who cares that we all got en route safely. Isabel has started to really think of Alinda like family, even though they've never met, sort of a grandmother figure - since Alinda was the princess' mother, and Isabel came from the princess' DNA and spirit. Apparently, since they found out about the Liz stuff, that also changes Isabel's status, in that she has Vilandra's DNA and the spirit of Vilandra's little sister, but that doesn't really affect her connection to Alinda I suppose.

So, while Isabel is off in the comm room or the lounge or somewhere trying to figure out what to say to aliens, I'm back in our room, experimenting with the ship's computer and trying to get used to the notion of living here for a hundred and fifty days. That's more than a school term... that'll take past the end of January, or it would if there wasn't a time compression effect one way or the other. Christmas - my folks will be celebrating christmas alone this year, not sure where I am, even if they believe Valenti's story, and as for us - even if we do mark the days and try to have Christmas on board ship, there probably won't be much we can arrange for decorations and gifts. Well, we'll deal that out when it comes up.

Might as well close out this 'log' session now, before I depress myself anymore. Pop in next door to visit Michael and Maria - assuming that they aren't occupied with stuff I'd rather not see. Oh, boy, that's another thing. I don't suppose these cabins are perfectly soundproof. Yet another slightly awkward bit. And we're right between Max/Liz and Michael/Maria, both of whom might get - a bit loud, in various ways. (At least Max and Liz probably won't have big screaming arguments.)

Log more later.

#

"Okay, I guess that covers things for Alinda," Max agreed, tapping a spot on the computer screen that generated a horizontal rule over the message screen. "What about Tess?"

"I'll handle that one," Isabel said, and took a breath before dictating to the computer. "Hi, Tess. Hope you and the baby are both doing well. If what we heard about your due date is right, he'll probably be a few months old by the time we get there. Kyle got your message, and though there was a lot of personal stuff that he'll have to decide if he wants to reply to, he mentioned that you said we should all try to hop on a ship and leave Earth, so thanks - that hint probably helped us all prepare ourselves for Larek and Christin's plan."

"How was your trip from Stellynfruss to Sanctuary? Probably it was a few months, or at least weeks, since you weren't going Granilith express. I never thought about that before now. It took us a long time to get the communicator working, and by the time we did, they said that you had arrived, but I never thought to ask about how long it had taken - or to speak to you directly, sorry about that. I think that **would** have occured to me, eventually, if the Kivar stuff hadn't popped up.

"I guess I'm learning a lot lately about how to forgive, first with Rath, who I hated for tricking us all and attacking Max, but then he turns around and helps protect Alex, bringing him back to me after I thought I'd lost him. And now even Lonnie is trying to make good and toe the line in exchange for her ride home, and I'm finding it hard to hang onto my grudge against her. Maybe anyone really can redeem themselves. I'm looking forward to seeing you again more than I expected to - and meeting my nephew, of course. Take care of you both. Isabel."

She tapped a button to turn off the voice recording function and turned to Max and Liz. "Whatcha think."

"Seems an okay note to sound," Max agreed, and then noticed that his fiancee was giggling very softly. "What is it, Liz?"

"Oh, just - I think that may be the first time we've told Tess - or anyone on Sanctuary - that Alex wasn't actually dead. Wonder how she'll react, having you mention it in passing just like that?"

"Hmm... probably she'll be very frustrated, and impatient to know more, the hows and whys of it," Isabel realized. "Okay, let's send it off as is."

"Good enough for me," Max said with a grin. "Hmm... you know, I'm actually feeling pretty hungry. Didn't eat much during the final run up to Childwold. I wonder what kind of food this ship'll be able to provide for us."

"Should we try to signal the steward?" Isabel said, indicating the contact button, which Christin had pointed out to them, saying that they just needed to tap it to page anybody on the ship through a kind of public address system.

"No, come on." Liz grabbed their hands, her eyes glinting with amusement. "There's a computerized food dispenser right over there - I saw the pilot use it right when we were getting started." She had to let go of Isabel again to gesture to the corner of the lounge. "Why don't we just take a look to see if it understands English, and anything about our food choices?"

"Liz, I'm not sure..." Max started.

"No, come on - if things go badly wrong, we can ask for help, but don't you want to try on our own, just once, for the first time?" And she got up, not letting go, and nearly pulling Max over towards the food dispenser slot. "Testing - do you understand English?"

"We're going to need to learn Antarian before the trip is done," Isabel muttered. "The translators here aboard ship are all very good, but a bit distracting, and they're not going to be everywhere..."

"Ssh," Liz insisted. Of the crew, only Christin knew English, but she'd programmed it into the ship's computer apparently.

The food slot replied with a long burble in an alien language. "Saying that it can't understand us?" Max asked. Liz gave him a silent look, that somehow clearly meant 'just wait a bit longer.'

"Interface established with linguistic databank," the slot suddenly announced. "English voice command interface is online. What can I serve you this - evening?"

"Hmm," Liz considered. "Let's see... I'd love two big slices of pizza."

There was a pause. "No recipe for 'pizza' found."

"Oh, well..."

"Analysis of dictionary definition in process. Analogs for dough crust and tomato sauce found. Insufficient information to replicate 'mozarella cheese' or 'pepperoni salami.' Is more data available?"

"Hmm..." Liz looked up at Max. "Think we can teach it to make a decent pizza?"

"Maybe - but something simpler might be a good first step," he pointed out. "Think how noxious a meal we might end up with if the cheese goes wrong."

"Oh, yeah."

"Try a hamburger," Max suggested.

"Hamburger recipe found," the slot replied. "With pickles or without?"

"Um - sure, pickles," he agreed, sharing an odd look with Liz. Had Christin managed to put this much into the food slot's programming.

"Extra mustard?"

"Nope."

"Working..." was the only reply for about thirty seconds, and then a fairly decent looking burger was lowered down into the delivery spot.

"Hmm." Max took it and had a bite - a bit plain compared to the Crashdown's eclipse burger, (which was nicely spicy,) but he wasn't complaining at this point. As well as the pickles and the mustard, the recipe apparently included a bit of a ketcup-like sauce and some shredded lettuce, as well as the bun and the meat. "Can I get fries with that?"

"What ingredient would you like - fried?"

"Guess not," Isabel put in. "I'll have a burger too, and some cold water to drink."

"'Burger' not found - can you specify water temperature?"

"Establish 'burger' as a synonym for hamburger," Liz said, wondering if this programming style would work. "Use three degrees celsius as a default tempeature value for all cold beverages."

"Understood." After asking Isabel about the pickle and the extra mustard - both of which she wanted held - the machine delivered her order. Max got some water to drink too.

Liz had a different idea though. "Computer, is there a menu listing of Earth food choices available?"

"Affirmative." The menu appeared on a screen above the food slot. "You can make your selections by tapping on the screen, in addition to voice control."

"Now that's using your head," Max admitted. "What have we got?"

"Hmm... okay, I'll try the grilled chicken and fettucine alfredo," Liz said, tapping options, "along with garlic bread, garden salad, and cherry coke. Not bad!" This took longer to deliver - the salad and coke came first, and they were all eating by the time Liz's main course arrived.

"Oh, hey guys - done with the message?" Christin said from the doorway just as Max was finishing his burger. "Or did you decide to take a food break? Figured out some of the recipes I was able to program in I guess."

"Yeah, umm, we're all ready," Max said. "Guess that we - umm, we thought that you'd be able to tell that with some sort of alien telepathy or something I guess, that there wasn't anything else we wanted to add."

"Nah, I don't use the mind reading mojo much - it's a violation of privacy," Christin shot back. Max blinked in surprise. "Oh - that was a joke?"

"Yeah, but it's alright," Liz assured her. "You can read the file we were working on and attach it to the outgoing message at the right time?"

"Sure," she insisted. "Anything else you guys need?"

"Very soon we'll need to teach that food system about pizza - not to mention mozarella cheese in general," Liz said with a smile. "This parmesan stuff on my noodles isn't good enough. But that can wait for a bit."

"Sure," Christin said with a laugh. "Never really got the point of pizza myself, though I have more of a sense of taste than most shifters."

"Not 'getting' pizza?" Isabel repeated in disbelief. "Geez, you really _**are**_ alien." All of them laughed a bit too hard over that one.

"Yeah, well, soon enough we're going to be the ones who are 'different'," Liz pointed out. "We're sort of out of place even here aboard ship, even though we outnumber the crew. Christin - language lessons?"

"Tomorrow morning, if you're up for them," Christin answered with a smile. "I can teach directly if you like, but the computer can probably do it a lot more patiently."

The three kids exchanged looks. "Well, we'll see," Max said. "Thanks for everything, Christin."

"All part of the service, sir," she said with a big smile, and left the room.

"Well, I should go back and keep Alex company," Isabel said, taking the second to last bite of her own burger. "Are there food slots like this one in the staterooms too?"

"I don't think they quite count as staterooms, but yeah," Liz laughed. "Also on-suite bathrooms, which don't look quite as weird as the ones you described from Stellynfrus, Isabel."

"Probably they don't have room for the fountains on board ship, so copied Earth designs," Isabel laughed. "I think they still have the sponge towels though." And she put her dishes into the recycler and left.

"What makes you say that it's not a stateroom?" Max asked Liz with a smile. "I mean, I'm not sure what a stateroom is, other than a passenger cabin on a ship, but if there's a qualification that we lack, I'd like to know about it."

"Huh." Liz considered that. "I don't know, actually. I guess I thought of staterooms as being very roomy, and fancy, like good hotel rooms - not quite a suite, but almost. May be way off base with that, though."

"Okay. Well, we can always try looking it up in the linguistic database later," Max pointed out. "Obviously it has a pretty good dictionary included, as well as translations into Antarian for everything."

"Yeah, but much later," Liz laughed. "I've got other plans for you once we finish eating, my Betrothed."

"Hmm... maybe I should grab something else," Max pointed out, since he was finished and Liz was still working on her chicken and pasta. "If you're going to wear me out."

Liz laughed merrily as Max went over to look at the available menu for himself.

#

Alex's personal log, day two.

Learning Antarian is **hard** - at least, for those of us without some alien blood or spirit or anything like that. Even Michael and Lonnie were struggling some with the basic 'vacation-level' phrases that we stated on today.

Oh, talking about alien spirits, Liz finally explained that part to Maria and I over breakfast this morning. (She insisted on having us try hot pizza for breakfast, because Christin had apparently been working on recipes through the night. Didn't seem half bad actually, though I think the pepperoni isn't quite authentic yet.) It was an incredible story, with the alien soul of Queen Ava being implanted in Liz's two grandmothers, passed down to their children, and then to her - kind of cool and yet mind-boggling at the same time. And it's hard to not laugh a little about Tess, being so determined to seduce Max and have his baby, not realizing that in soul, though not in body, she was more his sister than his wife. Yikes.

Things are settling into a kind of routine pretty quickly around the ship, which was named to us as the 'Van Allen.' Probably all of us want a little structure to our lives now that we've left Earth, so accidents easily turn into tradition, and soon hidebound rules. At least things aren't so cramped that there's a real shortage of different places to be if we're tired of sitting in our cabins, but there's nowhere that's really roomy enough for everyone to gather at one time either, which will probably make clique politics show up sooner rather than later. And yes, Isabel and I could tell that our friends were getting very, umm, affectionate through the walls last night, but it wasn't really too hard to tune it out and drift off to sleep. Isabel was experimenting with getting the computer to play Antarian music, including some stuff that she heard back when dropping Tess off and had been missing the sounds of. There isn't much earth music in the library, though, and I can tell that long before we make dock, I'll be homesick for Dido and Sense Field.

After what Isabel told me about the Granilith I was expecting something dramatic for the first jump into Warp space but it was pretty disappointing - stars disappeared from the viewing ports, replaced by the same pastel color patterns that she mentioned, but nothing inside the ship seems to be different, even the lack of engine vibrations and noise. Apparently we'll be taking something like eleven days for the first warp hop, which isn't really heading anywhere in particular, just heading away from Earth in a random direction so that we'll not be traced or followed.

There's a game room down the hall, which is pretty cool. I was wondering if it'd be a fancy holodeck-like thing, but no. Christin says that the Antarians do more or less have that kind of technology, but it's only available on larger and fancier ships than this. The games room is entirely computerized though, with walls, floor, retractable table and so on all being touch-screen computer interfaces, so that you could play cards with having your 'hand' displayed on a tiny popup of the table that other people can't see, and the cards that are 'played' showing up on the table. Isabel and I went up against Max and Liz on a game of floor chess, with the board taking up the entire room instead of being on the table, and we also tried an Antarian game that is kinduv chess-like, but got a bit frustrated with some of the more complicated rules. Oh well.

Michael, Rath, and Kyle are talking about trying to set up a full-immersion adventure game, where you can look out and 'see' different scenery, enemies, and so on over all four walls, but there wasn't something like that already in the computer, and I know that it's going to take a lot of effort to make some deal like that work. Would be pretty cool if we can get it working though, (and by 'we' I mean that I'm not going to slog through all of the programming myself just so that we can play.)

Oooh, looks like it's time for more basic vocabulary drill. More later.

#

"Oooh, c'mere sweet baby," Rath said, stretching out his arms and smiling as Ava jogged up and kissed him. "Yeah, I've missed you," he added once the kiss hello was finished. "Valenti isn't as bad as I thought he'd be, roommate-wise, but I still wish I was with you at nights."

"Yeah, I know sweetie," Ava replied, and sighed, leaning against him and looking out. They were using the observation pod as a lover's retreat, a small dome at the top of the 'ship' where the shifting colors of warp space were visible in a half sphere all around and above them. "But it kinduv made sense for me to go with Lonnie - at least for now. Maybe we can switch with Michael and Maria later, or some deal like that. Plus, isn't this more romantic than a room with shiny steel walls, alien fluorescent lights, and a tiny little porthole that we could peer out through." Rath's look was more than a little dubious on the value of this romance. "Oh, come on, just kiss me back."

He did.

#

"I want to decorate our cabin a bit," Maria mentioned to Michael as they had breakfast in bed together. "Put up some things to remind us of home, if possible."

"Hmm." Michael reached out, grabbed his black jeans, (which were due in for the laundry soon if not immediately,) and went digging in the back pocket. After a few seconds he brought out something made of blue plastic, about the size of a postage stamp but much thicker, with a notch cut out of one corner and little golden contacts."

"A flash memory card?" Maria repeated. "What's it from?"

"That little digital camera that you brought along," he said. Nobody had really thought of taking pictures on their road trip from Roswell to New York State, but... "It was nearly full of pictures that you or your mom, or I had taken back in Roswell and Corpus Christi, right? When we had to bail out of the motor home, I figured that the camera itself was too big to bother with, but for some reason I thought of taking the card."

"Hmm, cool," Maria said, seeing the possibilities. "Now, all we need is to tell the computers here on board ship how to understand JPEG image format on a FAT file system, or whatever, and rig up something capable of printing out the pictures, maybe even full poster size."

"Oh, come on, we've gone paperless here, haven't we?" Michael added with a grin. "I think that the computer can display the picture directly on the walls, if we can instruct it to."

"Really? I thought that was just in the games room."

"The game room is fancier, with better resolution and sensitivity, but there have been displays showing up on just about all the walls," he said. "Whenever Christin wants an interface, it just sort of shows up wherever it's handy."

"I thought that there were just specific spots in each room that could do that," Maria replied, and smiled. "But we can ask about it, sure. So, what else is up for today, beyond more language classes?"

"Hmm, not sure," Michael admitted. "Anything you want to do?"

"Hiking," Maria put in instantly, and giggled. "Might be hard to arrange, though. Let's see... watching a movie, same sort of issue I guess. Is there any possible way we'll escape going insane from the boredom in nearly five months more of this?"

"Well, let's see," Michael put in, wrapping an arm tenderly around her. "Once we've got some more of the language under our belts, I think that the computer library is going to start becoming more and more interesting in proportion. There's tons of Antarian music, books, video features and such in there, just waiting for us to get good enough to understand them."

"Somehow I think it may take more than a few more language lessons until we can understand the culture of an alien planet," Maria put in, and sighed. "For me, anyway. I'm not sure if you'll have an easier time of it or not."

"Hmm." Michael considered. "Oh, Alex had a notion for this big game that could keep things lively for a while."

"Hmm... what is it, has he taught the games room computer to play Balderdash or trivial pursuit or something?" She considered. "No, both of those are dependent on the material in the card boxes, which would be really hard to reconstruct from memory or anything."

"No, from what he's said it's just a sort of party game that doesn't involve much more than little slips of - paper or some close equivalent," Maria snickered, remember what Michael had said earlier about going paperless, "and enough people to play. It's called werewolf, and apparently it gets really deep and psychological. I didn't really follow what was in all of the rules, but maybe we can ask him to explain this afternoon."

"Alright." There was a little chime. "Oooh, okay, we'd better go clean up and get dressed for class. Who're we with today?"

"Max, Liz, and Lonnie I think," Michael said, getting out of the bed and heading around to the bathing annex. Maria met him with nothing on but a smile and hugged him hard. The habit of meeting in groups of five for the Antarian lessons was one of those firm traditions after only around two days on board ship - it allowed interaction and practice between the students without greating groups that were too large to meet anywhere. Maria was even starting to feel more comfortable around Lonnie from the times that they'd been in 'class' together - she was so dedicated and earnest when it came to her studies, which very much contrasted with her old New York 'badass as all that' persona. Everybody wanted to do well, realizing that language could be a prison for them at Sanctuary unless they learned how to get free of it.

In shower mode, the 'bathroom' was basically just one double-size stall, with all the other appliances retracting into the wall. Hot water tended to drizzle down from the entire ceiling, which had taken Maria some getting used to, especially because she didn't have a spot where she could retreat to and apply the lotions or hair cleansers provided, but it was pretty easy to adjust to getting that sort of thing done while still getting wetter. And there were lots of other fun things to do while getting wet. Not that they really had time for **that** kind of shower fun this morning.

#

Morning, day three.

Okay, spaceship werewolf is definitely a 'go.'

I hope that I'll be able to run this sort of a game without it totally self-destructing. I've only played werewolf/scum a few times, always with other people on the internet who I've never met. Heard about it being played in parties, and gotten a bit of the descriptions of how, but I'm not sure that too much of it can be carried over to this. For one thing, a lot of the rules in that situation seem to be oriented around making the game actually _finish_ in an hour or so, in order that people can go home, and what appeals to most of the people here is the idea of something that would last a long time, so as to relieve boredom at least until we get out of warp space and receive a message from the Rebels, if not much longer.

So, we've got eleven players total it seems, because Shana and Jevrok the steward both agreed to be in it. (Guess the other members of the crew are still too busy to play games, which I can respect considering how hard they have to work to get us all where we're going.) With a cohort like that, I think that the pack size of the werewolves will probably be three, though maybe that'll switch by one in either direction. One secret role on the townspeople's side, probably a psychic, and that should just about do it. I don't want to get overly clever the first time. For all of the secrect stuff, I've started to arrange some individually keyed computer access systems, sort of like online forums on the net back home, or more like email boxes I guess, so that the werewolves can vote together by night and the psychic can find out what his or her dreams tell, and so on. Well, I'll sort it all out and then give everybody the spiel. And no, I'm not going to put any of the secret identities in this log until they've been discovered, because I'm not sure it's as secure as the other computer files can be.

Let's see, what else can I talk about? Everybody's excited about the prospect of getting a message back from Sanctuary in five days or so, when we pop out of warp space for the first time. Not sure what Alinda or Rayde or anybody else there might have to say to us, but at least it's a source of new stimulation. Language courses are continuing - Isabel and Liz and a few of the others are really starting to progress past basic vocabulary - and run into the tricky stuff, the noun declension and verb conjugation for basic root words, which is the dreary part of every language I've ever studied myself. I'm still stumbling over 'pardom me madam, which way to the town square', but it's starting to click just faintly at least.

And then... well, umm, after quite a long stretch of acting uptight, Isabel has suddenly gotten lots more, well, affectionate, which I'm not sure if I should read as that she's even more worried than she was when she got on, or that she's finally relaxed. In any event - well, I'm certainly not complaining about the attention. Oh, sounds like she's...

#

"Okay, here's how the basic game works," Alex announced later that 'afternoon.' He was standing in the doorway just outside the games room, and all the werewolf participants were gathered inside the games room, inside the rec lounge nearby with the door open there too, and in the hallway near him. "First, everybody goes to consult the computer in secret to find out their assigned role in the game - just ask for your werewolf role and touch a contact point where it asks you to - we'll be able to manage everybody doing this in complete privacy I think, inside the bedrooms or the game room, with everybody congregating in rec who's waiting for a room to come free. Sound good?"

"Your role will be either townsperson, werewolf, or psychic. Nobody knows anybody else's role for sure but their own, so everybody will be acting as if they're townspeople, who are the most common. The townspeople, and the psychic, are terrified of the werewolves, who have already killed many of their loved ones, and everybody has agreed that they need to resort to drastic measures to root them out. Thus, for every 'day' of game time, which may be more or less than a day of ship's time, the town will vote on one suspected werewolf, who will be lynched. After the lynching victim dies, their role will be revealed for all to know."

"So, everybody gets to vote on lynchings, even the werewolves?" Liz asked from her seat in the games room. (Where she was sitting with one leg hooked over Max's, in point of fact.) "Because nobody knows who's a wolf but the wolves themselves."

"Right, Liz," Alex agreed. "The wolves will probably try to steer voting so that a townsperson is lynched, to spare themselves. At night, the wolves will meet secretly - this will be handled via the ship's computer - and vote on an outsider to settle on and attack before the sun rises. The wolves' victim, too, will be identified once he or she is dead, but this will not say as much, because the role will almost always be 'townsperson', unless they happen to catch the psychic. Once you're dead, you have to avoid interfering in strategy or saying anything more about your impressions of the game to the remaining players - even the psychic's gifts don't extend to communicating with the dead."

"What's the psychic good for, then?" Rath asked.

"Thanks for asking. Every night, as long as he survives, the psychic has a dream of another player and his or her true role - whether they're wolf or townsperson. He or she can try to control who they'll dream of, but this isn't perfect - if they try for a particular person, they'll get a dream about the right individual a little less than half the time."

"But how do they put that info to best use?" Maria asked. "They can't really just announce themselves and say 'yeah, I'm the psychic, here's what my dreams have told me." The town wouldn't really believe a claim like that."

"And if the wolves believe, they'll make the psychic the next victim," Max said thoughtfully. "The werewolves might fake a psychic claim to feed the town wrong info, and a plain townsperson might clain in order to take a sacrifice and distract the wolves away from killing someone more important, like the real psychic."

"Yep," Alex agreed. "You're starting to get the hang of it. One other rule that I'd like to mention, though it may have to be on the honor system - no trying to use sex or other physica favors to seduce secret identities out of your partner - or anybody else, as far as that goes."

"Oh, darn," Isabel joked back, and everybody laughed. "So, any other rules, or should we go get our assignments?"

"Just a few more details, won't take long I promise," Alex said. "After lynch voting has settled on a clear majority, there'll be a time limit for anybody to change their minds, probably four hours to start with, not counting the usual sleeping shift. I'll adjust that as time goes on. If it looks like nobody will reach a najority but there's a clear vote leader, I'll designate the same time limit. In the event of a tied vote, I'll randomly announce a tiebreaker for each round. Night play will also last about as long as it takes for the psychic and the wolves to get their business accomplished. Play will start in the daytime, which means that the town is voting without any real evidence of the wolves' strategy, and somebody will die based on baseless suspicions, but this is better than allowing the wolves to pick a victim first I think. Alright - go."

As people shuffled around to go into private rooms, Ava went up to Alex. "Are you ever going to pick a wolf as a tiebreaker?"

Alex just smiled slightly.

#

"Yeah, I'm curious when we're going to get into some words that don't have such easy English translatio..." Liz broke off her conversation about their Antarian studies when Michael came into the rec room and considered the big voting board up on the wall. After pondering the options for about twenty seconds, he tapped a spot on the row marked with his name, thus placing a vote for the first lynching, which he hadn't previously weighed in on. After considering his choice for another brief moment, he headed off to the food slot and ordered a king-sized banquetburger with all the trimmings, (including french fries, onion rings, and an extra-extra large pepsi. Sitting down at one of the tables, he finally seemed to twig that Liz, Max, Ava, and Kyle were all staring at him.

"What?"

"Aren't you going to say anything?" Max asked.

"About what?"

Max waved at the board, which just made Michael shrug a little. "You've placed a vote to lynch someone, and you have absolutely no comment to make to anybody about that?"

"If the person I voted for wants to ask for an explanation, then maybe I'll consider giving her one," Michael muttered. "What business is it of yours?"

"Well, we're all in this town together, and the only thing that's going to keep all the people from being wolf meat would be information," Max said. "Specifically, information about **why** people are voting the way that they are, not just the choices that they've made. It might not mean much now, I know, but we've got to start getting the baselines in, so that everything might come together later when we need it to." He paused. "Or if you refuse to speak up much, then we've got to wonder if you're one of the people who has the most to lose by showing up on the radar."

"_Everybody_ stands to lose by showing up on the radar, Max!" Michael exclaimed in exasperation, knocking his rings over with an extravagant gesture. "Wolf or human - anybody who gets noticed too much will end up _dead_. Either by getting voted up to the lynching block, or else by being targeted by the real wolves."

"But is that really losing?" Liz put in. "If you're a team player, then I think you can claim a victory if your team wins, even when you die first. Townspeople have to put the welfare of the town first and their own lives second - same for wolves and the pack, I suppose."

"Yeah, but getting myself killed too quickly isn't going to help anybody..." Michael muttered. Ava made a face at him. "Okay, you wanna know why I voted for Christin? It... it was just a hunch, but I - I started thinking about the way she's been acting since the game started. A little - removed, a bit like she knows so much more than we do."

"She does know a lot more than any of us do - well, except for Alex and Liz, maybe," Kyle put in.

"Maybe, but she's never shoved that in our faces before," Michael argued back. "It got me thinking about what Ed woulda done in the same situation, and I think that was the way he acted when he was trying to keep something hidden from us. Thus, maybe Christin is trying to keep from us that she's a wolf. It's not much, I know, but it may be the only way to guess - it's not like any of us really know her that well."

"Hmm... okay, okay, I guess we can leave it at that for now," Liz decided. "I don't think I agree with you, but I certainly won't put my own finger of suspicion on you for that."

"No, you like it where it is," Ava teased. Liz's own vote for lynching was currently set to Lonnie.

"I just want to see how she'll react if she thinks that she's actually in danger of being the first one out. Lonnie's the kind of girl where it's hard to tell anything behind her poker face unless she thinks she's about to lose her shirt." Kyle made an odd kind of half-laugh, half cough. "Maybe you should **ask** her to lose her shirt, Kyle."

"Very funny," he mumbled. "Between Lonnie and Tess I seem to just get the lovely, slightly pathological rejects interested in - well, in flirting with me, at least."

"Sorry," Liz said in a low voice.

"Okay, new subject," Max put in. "Umm... shapechangers, that reminds me. Christin can't have been the last alien remaining at large on Earth just before we left - excluding Kivar's new team, I mean. What about - about the protector who put you guys in New York? Any idea what might have happened to him?"

"The special unit could have caught up with him," Michael put in. "Pierce always thought that there was only one original crash victim unaccounted for - whether he guessed that we were unborn at the time or not I don't know..."

"I don't think that Pierce knew as much as he wanted you to think," Ava replied. "I actually managed to track the protector down before I met up with Rath again - after the Summit, you know?"

"Really?" Liz replied. "You never told me about that part."

Ava shrugged. "Slipped my mind, sister. Anyway, he was living in La-la land, all Hollywood, a big time producer. Didn't seem to want anybody alien to bother him, so I didn't. He should be able to deal with Kivar's people, if they give him any grief. Not's like he really knows anything about us anymore."

"I hope so," Liz said. "Wouldn't want to think of him getting into trouble on our account - and thanks for telling us - sister."

Max blinked slightly and looked over at his fiancee. This was the first time that he knew of the two girls had used that term, but it made sense in an odd way. Liz was reincarnated from the same alien spirit that had been copied, slightly altered, to make Ava, and that was probably part of the way the two of them had become good friends through such unlikely circumstances. He could do a lot worse than Ava for a potential sister-in-law.

"Alright," he said, squeezing Liz's shoulder and getting up from the seat. "I don't vote in line with my sweetie lightly, or want to give anybody the impression that she makes the big decisions..." Michael and Kyle both chuckle-snorted, more or less. "But that sounds like a plan that I can get behind - the Lonnie thing. I'll vote for her too. See what happens."

"Interesting," Maria said from the doorway as Max made his selection. "That makes her the clear leader, and only, what, two spots away from having a clear majority? Things are getting interesting."

There was general agreement as Maria went over to sit next to Michael.


	2. Chapter 2

Personal log.

Well, two days into the mafia game, and the first person has been voted off. It was Rath, and he didn't take it too well, especially because he was loyal town. Some of the other players are a little disheartened now, but it isn't too unusual to lynch fellow townies a time or two before getting a line on the pack. We're into the night stage now, and the pack is eagerly discussing their counterstrategy.

I happened to talk to Christin and the ship's captain, Variun, about how disconnected us Earthpeople feel from our roots, having had to leave so suddenly and with so little. Variun had an idea, about trying to see if we can get a library dump from some other ship at a rendezvous spot. It's surprising how much human cultural stuff aliens have gotten their hands on, apparently. Though they didn't say it out loud, I sort of get the impression that part of the appeal is that they find it campy - like the passing fad last fall for Russian pop music. It probably won't be all the newest and latest stuff, but I'd appreciate even a hit of seventies nostalgia at this point - assuming, of couse, that we can manage to arrange it without compromising the secrecy of our trip. There's also some Earth stuff that Christin had collected over her years here that wasn't available in the ship's computer yet - some CDs, books, and a sixty gig laptop hard drive almost full of newspaper clippings, audiobooks, classical performances, cached webzines, and a little bit of viral video. (As in the popular sense, not actual computer viri.)

Let's see, what else can I tell you about? Something seems to be bugging Maria about Michael, but I'm not sure what happened, and frankly I'm not convinced that Michael does either. Maybe it's just the close quarters getting to them - and Ava is pretty eager to take over their room if they can't occupy it together without fighting. (Taking Rath with her, of course.) Max and Liz, on the other hand, seem to spend more time alone together than just about anybody else, and are generally holding hands and looking all mooney-eyed at each other when they're 'out in public.' Of course, given the whole engagement thing, I should probably cut them some slack. And through all this, Lonnie seems to be more and more confident interacting with the rest of the gang - maybe because she wasn't first voted out of werewolf after all, (she made this big impassioned speech about how the town needed someone with as much killer instinct as she if they hoped to fight off werewolves,) and nobody's even talked about throwing her out of the airlock so far. Kyle's been acting very moody recently, on the other hand, and he actually asked Michael for a print of an old picture with Tess in it. (Everybody was very surprised that Maria and her mom kept that pic on a memory card, and Maria said that it had been saved somehow and she hadn't been sure how to delete it.)

Oooh, I think I'd better break off now. The psychic has left me a message about who he wants to try dreaming about. Ta ta.

#

"Let's see how long we can actually hold a conversation in Antarian," Max said to Liz in that language early in the afternoon. They'd gone back to their cabin after lunch for a - sexual exercise session, followed by brief naps. "About anything at all, as long as we've got the vo- the words for it."

"Okay, my dear love," Liz agreed. She was sitting in the chair in front of the dresser-desk, (still without a stitch on,) while Max stretched out all over the bed. "Have you thought about what you want to do about - about Tess' baby, once we get where we're going?"

Max drew in his breath. Somehow every time he invited the girl he loved to 'talk about anything she wanted to,' she managed to surprise him. "I... I'm not sure. She - in her letter to Kyle, she talked about - about having us adopt him, or you at any rate. Of the two of us raising him as our child."

"Yeah, I know. Isabel mentioned that in her message to Tess too, remember."

"Right. Well - I'd like that, but only if you're - if you would wish it of your whole heart." The grammar there was just as awkward in Antarian as it is translated directly into English, but it was the only way Max could think to phrase his thought with the words he knew. "Otherwise - try to find somebody who would be good family to him - maybe collateral branches of the Liaret royal house, maybe people with no direct blood relation, but hearts big enough to look past that."

"Yeah, I guess the way you and Isabel turned out speaks well for some adoptive families," Liz agreed. "He should have that much love in his life."

Max nodded at Liz, pleased that she understood. "Tess also mentioned - Queen Alinda taking care of the baby, but I don't think so. She's got to be very old, even for an Antarian, and probably not up to taking care of an infant, a toddler, and so on until he's old enough to leave the nest."

"Yes," Liz agreed, and giggled. "Raydeleen - she's Alinda's personal stand-in, right? Something like that. So if Alinda took on the guardianship of the baby, then Alinda would need to take care of him herself, if Alinda wasn't fit enough to live up to her own obligations..."

"Right - which might take away from the time and energy that Rayde is able to put into running the rebellion," Max said, seeing how complex the ramifications could get. "Better to head that one off, I think - Raydeleen seems to be competent enough where she is, and I'm not sure how good she'd be with a kid anyway."

"We don't really know her enough to tell, no," Liz agreed, and got up, looking for something to wear. They'd all had a few outfits designed and manufactured by the computerized ship's stores by this point, capably aided by Jevrok, who was eager to extend hospitality to all of his passengers. It helped to not be stuck in the one set of clothes that they'd each been wearing when boarding the ship that night. (Of course a few people, like Isabel and Lonnie, had been quick to use their own powers to make alterations to the wardrobes, providing for even more variety.) "That makes me think of another thing. Rayde's vows to Alinda - would they keep her from taking a husband? Having a child of her own?"

"Hmm... another good question," Max admitted. "I don't understand it well, but there's nothing that specifically prevents such things in gerhvellka, if both parties are amenable to it. But if Rayde's as much of a stickler as I think she is, she might have avoided such things because she felt that she couldn't serve Alinda as competently if she had other loyalties and attachments."

"Sounds a bit lonely for her," Liz said. And just at that point there was a soft buzz, and an interruption of English words coming from outside the door.

"Come on, you two! Night's over, and it's time to go and find out who got snacked on."

"Already?" Liz muttered in English herself, climbing into clothes all the faster, and tossing Max a bathrobe-like thing that would be easy to clothe himself in quickly. Rath had been eliminated only the evening before, and she'd sort of gotten the impression that night would last at least a day. Apparently it didn't take too long for the wolves to decide on their next move, or the psychic, whoever that was.

"Okay." Max kissed her, and brushed his fingers through her hair quickly. "You nervous?"

"Umm... no," Liz muttered, blinking. Up until that point, she hadn't even consciously realized that this point might be as far as she progressed in the game. But after Max brought the possibility to her attention, she was aware of it enough to get the point when Alex caught her eye in the hallway, shook his head, and pointed back to the room. "Umm, you go ahead without me. I forgot, umm... I'll be there in a moment," she told Max.

Max protested a bit when Alex started to make his announcement of the end of the first night period without Liz there, until the reason why sank in. Alex painted a vivid picture of how the blushing bride-to-be had been set upon in her bedchamber in the darkest hours before dawn, while her fiancee had been downstairs attempting to write wedding vows. "Or so he said," Alex quipped ominously. "Not trying to point suspicion your way, Max, just pointing out that you're a possible wolf yerself. And, to be perfectly clear, Liz was a townswoman, so that's two down."

"Okay, so the voting's started for lynching again?" Maria asked.

"Yes, or it will, in about one minute," Alex told her. "Any questions at this point?"

"What about the psychic's dream?" Ava put in.

"The psychic has his first result - or will, when he or she next checks the computer file, because I'm not sure if it's been read yet," Alex said. "None of the rest of you will know about it until and unless the psychic reveals."

"But what if the wolves get the psychic before he-or-she tell the rest of us about the dreams?" Jevrok put in. "Then there is no effect at all."

"Chicken game," Lonnie suggested. "Psychic wants to wait long enough to have some valuable info, in case they die soon after, but not too long to lose it all."

"Also, I guess I should mention the notion of breadcrumbing here," Alex put in. "Fairly usual tactic, so I don't think it's unfair interference to mention it. Basically, if I were the psychic, I might find some way of mentioning the results of the dreams in a way that's not obvious until the rest of you realize that I'm the psychic - like if the werewolves and my special status is announced after my death."

"Okay," Max said. "But the wolves will be looking at what everybody says, and if somebody too obviously drops breadcrumbs then the wolves will figure out why, and make a point of killing that person early."

"So maybe the rest of us should also say things that could be breadcrumbs, but aren't really," Christin put in. "Like - I pretty much get the idea that you're dependable, Michael - you're good with me."

"A bit obvious in that example, but a good idea nonetheless," Kyle agreed. There was a pause, with a couple people turning to look at him. "No, I may drop a subtle breadcrumb, but I'm not going to do it right now, when everybody's expecting it."

"Alright, then enough of the werewolf," Isabel suggested. "Nobody needs to vote right now, unless you're dead set on it. Language lessons now."

But Christin went up to the voting screen, cleared it of all the previous day's marks, (which nobody had done after Rath had been lynched.) and put a spot on her own line - Maria. "If anybody wants to know a reason why, it was because Maria seemed a bit over-eager to follow Liz's voting strategy yesterday, and now Liz is dead. Seems slightly suspicious to me, better than any other lead we have."

"Hmm." Michael's eyes narrowed slightly as he considered that.

"Is there a saved copy of the stuff you just cleared away, Christin?" Alex asked. "I wanted to keep a record of all the voting in case people want to consult it later."

She tapped a few buttons next to the diagram. "There is now - pasted out of the undo buffer under your main dataspace, Alex."

"Thanks." And they broke up for more intensive verb cramming.

#

"Hello, Miss Parker. Is there a question on your mind?"

Liz jumped a bit - partly she hadn't really expected anyone inside the conn room to notice her hanging around outside the doorway - and then there was further surprise since Flaiissar, the pilot, had spoken to her in pretty good english, without using the ship's translator function. Apparently they weren't the only ones who were studying hard at bridging the language gaps.

"Err - first off, is it okay that I'm here?"

"I certainly think so. Since things are calm, you could even be over here." Flaiisar gestured over into the room, closer to the thing, (or effect,) that Liz had been looking at. "We would discourage passengers inside crew working areas during less-calm times, but that is simply because you might occupy needed maneuvering room."

"Or, in simpler words, I'd be in the way," Liz said, stepping across the threshold. "And yes, there was something I was wondering about the holographic display. It's charting our course through warp space, right? Not just the jump that we're in the middle of, but other steps in our journey towards Sanctuary."

"Yes. Variun programs these - jumps, of course, and I simply execute them using the controls to the discontinuity manifold compressor."

"Okay," Liz managed. "But my question is - well, why do the marked paths curve so much? If we're not travelling through real space, wouldn't it be simpler to just connect the start and end of a jump with a - well, with a straight line? Or is there some way that the curved line represents our actual path through warp space better than a straight line would?" There was a moment's silence. "Sorry if the question sounds naive - I'm very interested, but I couldn't think of any better way to phrase it."

"No, that's alright," Flaiisar assured her. "I'm simply trying to think of the best way to explain it to you."

"Try talking your own language," Liz prompted in Antarian. "If there's something that I don't get, we can have the computer play go-between."

"Hmm, alright," he replied in the same language. "Well, first off, if you'll see, the straight line paths from the transition point to reinsertion are also marked in the holodisplay - but much less clearly, because they **are** of secondary importance."

"Oh, right, I see them now," Liz agreed. "Very faint white lines, possibly not even solid. What else?"

"Well, there are involved mathematical functions to solve in plotting a warp-space jump, and this curve through real space, the Korguvar baseline, can be defined based on the mathematics of the 'jump," he continued. "Again, Variun could probably say it better, but - I think it's partially correct that it indicates the set of the closest 'point' in real space to whatever spot in the multispace outside our own universe we truly occupy at any given moment during the trip..."

"So it's a sort of a projection of our real course into three dimensions?" Liz said. "A flattening out of it?"

"Yes - something like that I think."

"But - but why is it so looped?" Liz persisted.

"Well... part of it is that the time we take to execute our course has less to do with the length of the Korguvar baseline - and more with how free it is of gravitational interference. If we can 'curve' the baseline so that it avoids planetary systems, rogue planets, even known cometary clouds, then..."

"Then we go faster," Liz said, seeing it suddenly with a delighted grin. "And on the other hand, there are probably limits to how complex the curve can be, or levels of difficulty - a cubic curve is more difficult than a quadratic one, and easier than a quartic one." She said the names of the polynomial times in english, letting the translator fill them in, because she didn't have that kind of specialized math vocabulary in Antarian yet. (But soon enough she'd have to - especially if she wanted to start studying alien science in detail. Which might be a study that would take her a lifetime...) "And so on."

"A bit simplified, but yes." Liz realized that it hadn't been Flaiisar who answered her this time, and spun around to see Variun behind her in the doorway. "Please, no panic reactions, Liz. I'm pleased that you've started asking about ship operations. Any other questions?"

Suddenly Liz didn't want to get into many technical details. "Yes - is this part of why we're stopping - re-inserting, I mean, into normal space in the middle of nowhere? So that we can start off a new curve, instead of trying to join them into one trajectory where the formulae might not add up right?"

"Part of the reason, yes. Also because it's a good spot to check our position and integrate that into the new course calculations, and to send and receive messages without being caught at it by any of Kivar's patrol ships. In addition to receiving the reply from Sanctuary, we're going to be attempting to arrange a rendezvous with a Tleonic trade convoy. They won't sell news of us to Kivar, and I think I can scrounge up something that they'd be interested in bartering for."

"Okay, that's - that's good news I guess," Liz said, stepping away from the holograph. "I'll... I'll get out of your way now, if that's quite all right."

"Well... certainly Liz." She made her escape, trying to figure out why neither getting called 'Miss Parker' or 'Liz' by the crew really made her feel particularly at ease.

Heading down the corridor, it was hard not to notice that somebody was arguing, and that the subject of - of dispute was connected to the werewolf game. Liz hesitated only a moment before following the raised voices. She might not be allowed to interfere in the game anymore, as a dead girl, but that didn't mean she couldn't watch and listen.

"It's crazy," Maria insisted. "They can't base their vote on... on a game of some freaky four-way chess."

"If we want to, of course we can," Isabel said. "I... I'm sorry if you're upset by it, but I thought it was an interesting twist to put things in, and I hope it works out well.

"Who's betting votes on four-way chess?" Max said, heading towards the game room from the other direction. He smiled when he saw Liz and reached out his hand for her to take, which she did.

"Isabel and I are playing, and betting, against Ava and Kyle," Michael said a little reluctantly. Probably the dirty look that Maria was giving him had something to do with the reluctance. "If we win, they vote against Lonnie. If they win, we - we vote against Maria."

"Hmm." Max considered this. "Whose idea was it, and who seems to be winning?"

"Ava's idea," Maria said, flinging out her finger in accusation. Max nodded calmly in response. "And - and I'm not really sure if anybody's winning yet. They haven't made that many moves."

"No, we haven't," Kyle agreed. Sure enough, the big digitize game board on the table, (a twelve by twelve grid with irregular notches taken out at the corner,) hadn't been disturbed too much from the opening positions. Isabel was white and Michael light blue, against Kyle's black and Ava's burgundy. One thing that Liz had found very distracting about this kind of variant the few times she'd tried was the notion that the enemy wasn't straight across the board from you - partners sat opposite each other, like in bridge and other card games, so that you had to level your attacks towards the sides of the board, instead of straight across. To a certain extent, it flopped the roles of bishops and rooks, in that bishops could now attack directly with a bit more ease, while rooks had to change direction halfway, instead of vice versa.

"Do you want to stay here and watch the whole game?" she asked Max in a whisper.

"Hmm... I'm not sure," he admitted. "Maybe we could grab something to eat, talk or whatever, and still come back for the tense endgame." Liz grinned at that thought. "Oh - how is the final winner being determined? First to make a checkmate, or last person standing?"

"Last team standing," Ava said absently. "With one of the mixed-takeover variants for what happens after an early checkmate."

"Oh." That meant, after the first team member was eliminated, whoever had managed to press the attack home would get the first choice of his or her pieces to 'recruit, and some would go to the other players, the rest removed from the board. So if Isabel, for instance, got checkmated by Kyle, Kyle would become even stronger, and Michael would pretty much need to make a checkmate himself soon after, or he'd quickly get overwhelmed by a co-ordinated offensive.

"Let's just grab food quick, and come back to watch," Liz suggested. "I'm suddenly very interested - but also pretty hungry."

"Yeah, sure," Max agreed, heading towards the rec room instead of back into their cabin. "So, what have you been up to?"

"Actually, I was asking the pilot some stuff about charting a course through warp space," she said. "Much more involved than I initially thought it was."

"Big surprise there," Max said. "I guess the Granilith made it easy for Michael and Isabel - they just told it where they wanted to go, and it took care of everything else."

"Yeah, being a mysterious alien supercomputer inside must have helped it out there," Liz added with a laugh. "Okay, what about you?"

"Oh, helping to catalog some of the stuff from Christin's media hard drive," Max said with a laugh, "and getting lost in it - like newspaper accounts from a small town in North Carolina from the eighties."

"Hmm." Liz considered that. "Seems highly compelling in a severely random way, yeah." Max laughed at that. "Oh, captain said something about meeting traders for some bargaining, if we can. Any idea what that's about?"

"Probably more earth media for us hungry and dislocated refugees," Max laughed, "though there might be other stuff that the crew need for themselves or for keeping the ship running well. I wonder what they'll offer to trade in exchange, though."

"You could ask," Liz pointed out. "You're the king after all."

"And you're my queen," Max said just as matter-of-factly. "You're the one who was always supposed to be the queen, Liz, and don't think that these people don't understand that yet. You've got every bit as much royal authority as I do, or Isabel or Ava."

She smiled at the thought and finished ordering her food. "Yeah, but it's one thing to say and another thing to get used to the idea of ordering people around."

"Yeah, like you don't love taking charge and being in control of the situation," Max pointed out. "I think I know better than that. Yes, it's a bit of a stretch to realize that you have authority in _this_ particular situation, around people who are adults, really, and some of them trained to command themselves. I have the same issues - but maybe it's something we can work our way through together?"

Liz laughed out loud. "Why, that sounds simply _smashing_, your majesty!" He kissed her hand in courtly fashion, chuckling too.

"So," Liz picked up again after they'd started eating for a couple minutes in silence. "If you don't mind me pushing the future plans stuff yet again, any idea what you expect you'll be doing when we get to Sanctuary? Of course, we may not have that much say ourselves, at least not about the expectations that people lay on us, but trying to get a handle of what we expect and what we want may make things easier."

"Yeah," Max agreed, and took a deep breath. "One thing that will probably be tough on us, but that I think **is** important, would be working with Rayde to get a handle on the current state of the rebellion - how hot or cold the war is, and what the circumstances of the people really are."

"Oooh, yeah." Liz had to think about that for a moment. "So that you could take charge of the fighting yourself?"

"Or - or negotiate a peace, if that's even possible with Kivar," Max said reluctantly. "I... I know that it could be dangerous, either way - but if there are people who are suffering because I haven't been able to come through for them yet - Well, the reality is probably more complicated than that, I realize. But..."

"But you want to help, if you can," Liz said in a soft breath. "If you didn't, then you wouldn't be the man that I love, the man I am **going** to marry."

"Yeah," he agreed with a big grin. "And what about you? I'm sure that you have some sort of plans beyond being a trophy queen."

"Indeed - I want to learn," Liz said straight off. "Antarian science, history, their society and culture, maybe even how to better control the powers that I've been showing now and again recently. Not even sure if I'll have the time to learn all of what I want to know before I have to - to roll over and die maybe, or whatever." She smiled an oddly cute smile at him, incongruous with what she'd just said. "Maybe I can even figure out something new to teach others there, either just working hard at it with my god-given brain, or synthesizing Antarian knowledge base with something that's routinely taught on Earth and that none of them ever thought to apply."

"Alright, sounds good enough," Max agreed.

"And also, at some point - I do want to have children," Liz said. "Your children and nobody else's, clearly. But - whether or not I'll be able to open my heart to the son that - that you've already got on the way, and I'm not saying anything either way on that one yet - but I want to carry a child of yours within me. To bring him or her into this galaxy, even if that hurts."

Max smiled at the thought and took one of her hands in both of his. "Christin and I have talked a bit about the healing gift that we both share. It's customary among Antarian and other galactic societies for a healer to attend the birth of children, and use their abilities to keep the mother from feeling pain. I want to do that for you, to hold your hand while you're in labor with our baby and keep it from hurting you."

"Sounds good," Liz agreed. "Umm, I need that hand to eat with now, though."

"Oh, right," Max laughed nervously as he let her go. "Sorry."

When they got back into the games room, the midgame was definitely well under way. As far as Liz could tell, Ava was concentrating hard on attacking Michael, while Kyle was splitting his attention between supporting her, and keeping Isabel from effectively harassing either of them. As interesting as the play was, Max started to get a little bored just watching, so he, Liz, Lonnie, and Maria started a game of railroad Euchre further down the table. (They could always go back and review the chess action on a seperate display if somebody missed a critical move during actual play.)

It took a while for the game to finish, but it seemed shorter to Liz, because she was distracted with her cards whenever something really important wasn't going on. Ava checkmated Michael, but accidentally opened up a hole in her defense in the progress, so it seemed that Isabel would be able to checkmate Ava. Kyle managed to prevent that, but at the cost of his own defenses, so that Isabel was able to press home an attack with one of Michael's recruited knights against him. That left Isabel versus Ava, each with swelled armies from having made a conquest. The struggle was titantic, but fundamentally unstable, and everybody could tell that it wouldn't last long. Finally, Ava made a clever double-check and turned that into mate a few turns later.

"Alright, fair enough," Michael said, going over to the voting board and changing his vote to Maria. "Isabel?"

"She has to, doesn't she?" Lonnie asked. "What did Alex say?"

"That you could let this bet determine your votes," Christin answered from out in the hallway. "He didn't say that anyone was enforcing the bet. Isabel has to decide if she's really going to go through with it, or weltth."

"That's welsh on a bet, or something like that," Isabel muttered. But apparently her pride had been stung enough to go through with it, because she went up to the board and altered her own marking.

"That's a majority of the nine remaining players," Kyle pointed out. "More than a majority, actually - six out of nine, counting Lonnie and Christin's votes for Maria. When do we go through with this?"

"God, come on, impatient for my blood much?" Maria nearly spat at him.

"We should bring Alex in, though," Max said softly. "He'll set an appropriate time limit, though I don't think there's too much chance that two of you will change your minds."

Alex was found in the room he shared with Isabel, (trying to make up some music on the computer,) and he agreed with Max. "Two and a half hours, I think. That'll mean the lynching can go through before anybody's dinner time, if nothing interupts countdown."

#

Everybody gathered around for the second lynching announcement, except for the ship's pilot, and Rath, who seemed to be boycotting the werewolf sessions entirely in his funk. Alex went over some of the circumstances that had led up to the power bloc voting against Maria, mentioning that she, Max, and Jevrok were still voting against Lonnie. "Maria gets brought up to the gallows, her head forced into the noose, as she struggles violently," Alex reads out. "As the breath drains from her body, it turns back into its true wolf form." Maria made a sort of a 'dying snarl' sound as elaboration and frustration. "Congratulations town, you have found your first wolf. Night phase starts now. No strategy discussion for good townspeople until the morning."

"Wow," Max said, breaking the silence. "I can't believe that that actually... well... I have to say 'well played' to Maria, if that's allowed."

"I guess so, but it's pushing it," Alex said, and there was kind of a nervous restless shuffle at this point. "Maria, Liz, if you want to discuss your impressions of the game among yourselves, though, you're welcome to. Rath and I can join you, any of the crew who didn't decide to play."

"Hmm." Maria considered that. "I don't have to tell them who my packmates are, though, do I?"

"What, you don't want to share with your oldest friend?" Liz teased her.

"No, I'd rather you didn't give away secrets like that actually," Alex agreed. "Not saying that you'd let anything slip to Max, Liz, but better not to risk it. We'll all... well, I already know all the secrets, so the rest of you will find out soon enough."

A lot of the people still active in the game ended up crowding into the rec room to have dinner again, a part celebration of having killed one of the wolves, and 'last meal together' since one of their number would be killed **by** the wolves before game-time morning arrived. It was a bit of a stilted affair, between nobody being able to talk about strategy, and the knowledge that there was at least one werewolf still at large in the town who might well be at the table.

Liz, Maria, and Alex did have a more intimate dinner together in Liz and Max's cabin, not talking about the game so much as other things - including a spreading of the sort of things that Max and Liz had been discussing about plans for life on the alien planet of Sanctuary.

"I do understand what you mean about having so much to learn, Liz," Alex agreed, after taking a bite with both chicken fingers and fries in it. "Finding out how to really work with computer systems like the one on this ship - not just giving it instructions and having it respond, but figuring out new ways to build them and make them so user-friendly - or at least building interfaces for other people to use without having to specify them themselves... I'd love to get into something like that." He sighed. "Not sure if Isabel has any idea what she's going to do there, actually."

"Well, we've all got a little time to figure it out," Maria pointed it out. "Not sure - aside from seeing if I could make it as a famous folk-rock singer on Sanctuary, or something like that." Liz chuckled. "Well, we don't really know what they think much of human-style music."

"Yeah," Liz agreed. "Did you know that according to the last census, Sanctuary has about seven thousand 'human' citizens, and nearly fifty thousand hybrids?"

"Wow, no, really?" Maria asked. Liz nodded solemnly. "Michael mentioned something about there having been some human abductees and so on who ended up on Antar, but I didn't realize that there'd be so many at the Rebel headquarters. Fifty thousand - that's more than the population of Roswell, right?"

"Yeah," Liz nodded. "Total population of Sanctuary is somewhere around three million I think, which is around the size of Phoenix with some of the bigger suburbs included. So the human hybrids are a minority, but not really a tiny one."

"I wonder what kind of minority subculture they have," Alex put in. "I mean, most of them, even the 'pure human' ones, would have been born on alien worlds, or spaceship and space stations. Their people can't have passed much on about Earth, especially if they originally came from abductees - and there'd be all kinds of different cultures and historical periods that they represent." There was a pause as people considered this. "Isn't Raydeleen part human? I thought Max mentioned something about that."

"Like one eighth human, so one of her great grandparents was," Liz said. "I think that's what Max said. She has brown eyes and reddish-orange hair though, which is unusual for Antarians, and I think someone said that she'd have been able to breathe the air on Earth if she needed to. How they figured that out I'm not sure."

"Without needing a Skin or anything, you mean?" Maria asked, and Liz nodded. "I guess if they know what crap it is in Earth's air that they have a hard time with, they could test her under it in controlled conditions. Making her exercise while breathing a simulation of human air pollution, and so on."

"Yeah." Liz sighed and took a bite of the pizza, which she had worked hard to program right. "This may sound weird, but what do you guys think I should do about Max and Tess' baby?"

"Hmmm." Alex thought about this. "Well, this might be an odd thing to bring up in connection, but it it hadn't been for that scuffle around the pod chamber back in the fifties, the one that Christin had to clean up, it would have been you growing up inside of Tess' body, right?"

"Huh. Yeah, I guess, in a way, though it's weird to think about that." Liz sighed. "I still like being me more than the idea of being a bouncy hybrid with really blonde hair like that."

"Because it's what's familiar to you," Maria said, and Liz allowed that with a nod of her head.

"So, what you're saying is, in terms of genes, Tess got the ones that I was supposed to end up with, and so in a way, her son is already mine?"

"Something like that," Alex said. "You keep saying 'in a way', not that that's unexpected with stuff like this. Everything's far from clear."

"Yeah, but that does help," Liz said. "And it's not going to be this kid's fault how Tess connived to get him conceived. I'll have to think about it a bit more, but I'm leaning towards saying I do want to adopt him."

"Okay," Maria put in. "This might sound a bit weird, but what about the soul aspect? I know that DNA-wise, there's no real question of incest, but... but if Max had the soul of Zan, and Tess had the soul of Vilandra, then..."

"Probably better not to even get into that." Liz said. "I think that even the alien scientists aren't too sure of what's going on when they're not mucking around with 'essence' - how much of it is inherited from the parents, what part of it might come from a great beyond or whatever. Still - we don't know of any psychic problems associated with soul incest..."

"Not like the situation has ever come up before," Alex pointed out.

"Yeah, but still." Liz took a deep breath. "And I don't think that Vilandra is reprehensible, in any of her versions, actually. She may be somewhat lacking in empathy and less aware of the moral consequences of her actions than is really good, but - but I think that there's some nobility in her heart and a capacity to better herself. If the kid inherits any of her faults, then maybe that's a better reason for Max and I, who know those failings well, can bring him up and help him learn to fight off... the temptation of the dark side?"

"Hey, Luke Skywalker did it," Alex put in. "He even managed to redeem Anakin - or Anakin redeemed himself out of the love that he felt for Luke. That's good enough for me."

"Yeah, a good example to keep in mind," Maria agreed. "Especially as we head towards our own Rebel Alliance base."

The three friends all laughed together, and Liz suggested ice cream for dessert. (It was low-fat and tasted just like it wasn't.)

#

Kyle looked at the door of the cabin nervously. Since Rath had been first out of the game, he wasn't that likely to honor the privacy signal and stay outside, just because he was doing game business. Then again - if he did happen to find out something, he **probably** wouldn't say anything about it to anybody still playing, if only because Ava would kick his ass for disrupting things, but...

He touched the screen to identify himself, and pulled up his private file that Alex had given him, pulling up the information on his psychic dreams. He had asked about Lonnie the time before, and gotten confirmation that she was townsperson, which was part of why he had argues so fiercely on her behalf, along with Ava, and thought up the chess game thing. Actually finding out that Maria was a wolf had been an interesting plus, but he was pleased with that much. So, what now?

Well, there had been quite a few people who had been defending Maria or trying to pin the finger of suspicion onto Lonnie - Max, Michael, Isabel - and that steward guy. Taking a moment's consideration, he said to the computer, "I want to dream about Isabel and find out if she's a werewolf or not."

"Acknowledged," the computer said softly. "Please log back in later for the results of your dreaming."

"Okay," Kyle said, just out of habit, and logged out of the system now that his business was done. He got up from the desk and went over to the bed, wondering if there was anything else he should do before trying to fall asleep. Oh, right. "Computer, take off the privacy code on the door."

"Acknowledged."

Dreaming - that reminded him. He had had a dream about Lonnie last night for real, a dream that had been both erotic and faintly scary. Had she been... an actual monster in the dream? Certainly not a werewolf, he'd have remembered that. A vampire?

No, not an actual monster, but - she'd attacked him. They'd been - yikes, they'd been in the middle of foreplay, and she'd strangled him, taunting him by saying that if he wanted to let go, all he needed to do was tell her the safe word. For one thing, he hadn't been able to say anything without air, and in the dream he hadn't known what the safe word was anyway. He had tried to claw her away from him, but hadn't been able to do anything to phase her, although his hands had slid over naked skin that would have been exciting in any other circunstance - was maybe "still' exciting even in the danger he was in...

"Yeesh." Well, what else? If he didn't like that dream, he could try to control it, like his character in the dream - or at least redirect it. Almost immediately his thoughts went to Tess, though he wasn't sure if he was any less scared of her. And the two girls were just different faces of the same soul, apparently. Was it his fate to be linked to a sociopath no matter what? Well, it wasn't like he'd really have many more chances to meet a nice girl next door on Sanctuary. Or would he?

He groaned and turned over, wondering if he'd be able to get to sleep at all.


	3. Chapter 3

Ship's personal log.

Okay, the game's progressing well, and it's only _two days_ until the end of our first warp space jump. Hard to believe that a week has passed so quickly.

I might as well start actually commenting on game stuff inside this log, it's not as if anybody has even tried to get into it without my permission. Isabel teases me a little bit about 'getting too star trek' and always calling it my personal log - but hey - I'm allowed to get pretty trekker when we're actually on a spaceship.

Kyle's doing well with the psychic stuff, though I think that he's not even asking about the people closest to him. The wolves took out Lonnie because they thought that she was too much of a threat, which I still think was a bit of a mistake - even after she helped take out Maria, they might have been able to throw suspicion back on her, but that could have backfired.

Okay, that's all I'm going to say about werewolf for now.

Oh, I talked to Isabel about the 'what do we do when we get there' thing this afternoon. To my surprise, she did have a few interesting ideas - she's eager to learn and to travel, mostly learning about the different cultures and societies out there. She's also interested in trying to start a caregiving profession - like a dream analyst or something, if there'd be a need for that in Antarian society. She's going to try asking one of the crew about that. She was really excited about what I was saying about learning enough to really work with alien computers.

Then she brought up something else - what do we say about our relationship and do about our lifestyle when we get there? The aliens seem to already have the notion that we're lovers, which we are at least in terms of our emotional attachment, but - what would that mean in terms of their expectations? Would they want us to be living together? (Like, not wanting in terms of actually having a vested interest in it, but looking at us funny if we didn't want to.) Would somebody suggest that we get married, and have a big double wedding with Max and Liz?

Myself, I don't think I mind the thought of living with Isabel even after we land again, but I'm not at all sure about getting married _yet_. For one thing, I get the impression that Liz wants to have a special day all to herself, and come to think of it, Isabel would _insist_ on that. And yeah, I'm just traditional-guy enough that I want to set the timeline myself - I want to pop the question to her, and having a pendant beforehand to offer her, and knowing that she'd freak out a little when I'm down on one knee...

Oh, we've got Antarian movie night tonight - most of us have gotten to the point where we'll follow most of the dialog, although Kristin has set up something where we can ask for quick translations if there's anything that we're missing. Apparently, the movie is one of the galaxy's best feel-good comedy-adventures - like their version of the Princess Bride. Actually, it's not Antarian I think, it's Gevinorian, which was one of the other planets that sent representatives to the Summit - old Antarian colonies from thousands of years ago.

I'll let you know what it was like later.

#

"How long do we have?" Max asked.

"Around twenty-five minutes, sir," Christin said. "You sure you'll be fine in here?"

"Yeah, this is great," Max answered. He and Liz were sitting in the games room, getting ready to watch the message from Sanctuary once it arrived. "Just feeling a bit impatient. Christin handed him a little wireless pad, full of vocabulary to drill on. Hmm, thanks." He tapped a few keys and turned it to an Antarian novella that he'd been working his way through.

"Just a moment," Liz said, tapping Max on the leg and getting up. Across the room, Lonnie was standing alone, and Liz got close enough to her to whisper. "Just wanted to say, I really admire everything you did in the game, even if it got you killed. Takes guts to make a big play like that, even if it gets people thinking that you're a wolf yourself."

"Maybe I should have been a wolf, it'd have been more fun," Lonnie said with a grin. "But thanks. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't pay off, huh?"

"Sometimes just having a rep for being too smart doesn't pay off, does it?" Liz said, and Lonnie smiled. "Okay, well, we've got a little bit of time before we're finally out of warp. How about a game of... I dunno, gin or something?"

"How about quinto?"

"Umm... haven't heard of it, but sure."

"Okay, here we go." Lonnoe pulled up the game reference on the computer table next to them - she or somebody else must have pre-programmed it in. An identical set of thirty two playing cards, ace down to seven in each suit. "Okay, here's our starting decks."

"So we have identical decks?" Liz asked, a bit confused.

"Yeah, that's exactly it. We have all the same stuff, but it's what use we make of it that's the difference."

"Hmm." Liz thought. She actually liked that idea better than typical card games, where one person might get dealt good cards and another has all the worthless ones. "But we have the full deck, every time?"

"No, not after the start," Lonnie said with a bit of a grin. "One of us randomly deals seven cards away, so that they can't be use, and the other person puts the same seven aside. Why don't you tap the deck to start that."

"Alright." Liz tapped, and sure enough, there were some holes in her deck, and they were put in a tiny miniature pile that she couldn't get at. "So, what else is the rest of the game like?" She didn't want to have to make any strategic decisions without seeing how they fit into the whole of the rules.

"We have the same twenty-five cards now," Lonnie said. "You split them up into five poker hands, and set them up to go up against mine, one at a time. Whoever sends a better poker hand into a particular matchup wins points - the first matchup is worth three points, then four, five, six, and seven. You need thirteen points or more to win the whole match."

"Ah-ha." Liz started to think about that. "What if we tie on one hand."

"Points carry over to the next if possible - if we tie on the last, then all points carried over get split."

"Hmm." Liz's mind was racing with the possibilities. There were two different aspects of strategy here - splitting up the set of cards into a 'better' set of hands - maybe she could go for a straight flush, but that would take cards that are better used in some other combination. And then, the ordering was another kind of strategy - if she could figure out the order in which Lonnie would put her hands, she could probably beat each hand with one that was just a little better, except that Lonnie's best hand would go up against garbage. But it would take a lot of effort to overthink a girl like Lonnie in a battle of wits like that.

"Okay, let's go!" she exclaimed, and a little divider suddenly appeared in response to her words between them, so that neither could see what the other was doing with their cards until the showdowns began. First, Liz considered the seven dead cards, which she could examine but not do anything else with - and they made an unusual bunch. Ace and queen of clubs, King, nine, eight, and seven of diamonds, and eight of hearts. Not a single spade had been thrown away. Well, sometimes random shuffling would give you weird distributions like that. What did that mean here?

Straight flushes - the best hands in poker. Three straight flushes were possible, and there didn't seem to be any obvious tradeoffs in taking them. The club straight flush was weakest - only to the jack, but hearts and spades could be royal flushes - and it would be stupid to make them anything else. That accounted for fifteen of her cards straight off. Liz made the appropriate dragging motions to organize them that far and see what she had left for the dregs.

Ace, queen, jack, and ten of diamonds were left - also the king of clubs, nine, eight, seven of spades, nine and seven of hearts. Yeah, there wasn't much here. No triples of a given rank to make full houses out of, and no suit left with five cards in it for a flush. There was at least one card left of every rank, so she had the makings of a straight - probably best to go with the ace-high straight, because it would beat any other one, and it happened to leave two pair free for the junk hand - all the nines and sevens, and the one eight. Okay, good enough so far.

Now, what about the ordering? All of what she had done by putting these cards together was, as it happened, thoroughly straightforward - there hadn't been any tricky tradeoffs to puzzle over, at least not any that she'd seen. Lonnie couldn't improve on her power by giving up one of the straight flushes, could she? Probably not the royals - if she sacrificed the clubs, then that would give her... three nines and three sevens, to make two full houses out of. Also an extra eight, ten, and jack. Didn't seem to be really worth it. Don't worry about that, then.

Lonnie had to have played this before - she'd know some of the obvious ploys. Naive strategy - put your hands in the order of the scoring, best for last. Obvious trap - do 'one better' than every hand, except the best, which can be matched against the worst - and that could lead to a counter-trap, and so on. But the two best hands would tie this time around - how did that change the basic strategy. You couldn't beat somebody's second best hand by substituting your best - they would only tie. You could try putting two lower hands up against the royal flushes deliberately, and get all three other showdowns if you could guess one spot where she _hadn't_ put in the low club flush, but - but that would only win three showdowns against two, and it would do no good if those two were the last two, since they were worth 13 points all by themselves - enough to win.

But you could tie one of those showdowns, royal against royal, and do the stepping stone strategy on the other four showdowns. Yes, that looked like the best alternative to hope four. Win three, lose one, tie one - probably tie the last one, so that you wouldn't need to worry about the points from the tie carrying over to the one match that the other player won. Okay, would Lonnie have figured that she'd get that far - yes. But still, where would Lonnie place her hands, based on all of that? Where would she think that Liz would place hers? Liz didn't know, and this was starting to give her a headache.

Thinking furiously, Liz came up with a number of random number tests that she could run just by looking around the game room, to come up with a starting list that Lonnie hopefully couldn't anticipate. What she got, in the end, was the two pair first, then the straight, then the two royal flushes, and the low straight flush in the end. There didn't seem to be anything too badly wrong with tha... no, she _had_ to have one of the royal flushes last, so that if worst came to worst, she would at least tie the carry-over points from any previous tie. Switch the straight flush with the last before it, and - and lock everything in. There.

Lonnie still hadn't finished yet, and seemed to be more than a little uncertain about the best way to proceed as well. Finally she slotted in her final picks, and Liz waited to see the first few showdowns. Her two pair were beaten by a club straight flush, and her straight by a royal flush in hearts. The score showed that she was getting beaten, but Liz still smiled - she knew that Lonnie had used two of her strongest hands on these showdowns, and couldn't keep her from winning at least two of the last three.

And right then, there was a kind of a shifting in the walls and floor, as if the spaceship were a sea boat crossing the wake of another vessel. "Was that the insertion back into real space?" Liz asked. "I didn't notice any effect like that with the first warp transition?"

"Yeah, it's at about the right time," Max said. "You wanna come back over here?"

"Oh, um - yeah sweetie. We'll finish this up later?"

"Yeah," Lonnie agreed, though she didn't look eager for the conclusion. "Figured that you'd do something like the first derivative - not a variation off the naive strategy."

"Yeah, well, surprise," Liz said with a grin. "Well played though. You can't win them all." And she hurried over to sit next to Max again. "Do we know when the transmission will arrive?"

"Probably not for around another fifteen minutes," Lonnie put in. "Since we've been incommunicado for the entire length of the warp space jump, there hasn't been any way for Sanctuary to confirm our arrival time here, or our position. They'd leave that much leeway in order to not miss us entirely, I would think."

"Hmm - maybe you should go finish the game, Liz," Max said. "Hadn't realized it would be that long."

"Well, maybe I'm wrong," Lonnie answered. "And you don't need to get up, Liz, I can go through this without you." She tapped on the table a few times. "You win number three, you win four, and we tie five. Total score of fourteen and a half to you, compared to ten and a half for me."

"Okay," Liz said with a smile. "How about we play something quick that Max can take part in?"

"Hmm... like what?" Max asked, running his fingers over the skin of her neck and up to her ear.

"I'm not playing anything like that," Lonnie put in quickly. "Not that you ain't both cute, but I make it a point to never get mixed up with a couple as much in love as the great Max Evans and Liz Parker."

Liz giggled. "Okay, umm... I have to admit I'm not really sure what to even say to that."

"Pretty much why I said it."

At that point Alex and Isabel came in, saying that apparently the message was expected in only another two or three minutes, and they wanted to watch it there.

#

"Five minutes," Lonnie said, staring at the updating numbers, (in Antarian digits,) on the table in front of her. "Five minutes and ten seconds..."

"Come on, shut it with that routine," Isabel snapped at the other girl. "These things can't be exact - is it our fault for passing along the estimate?"

And right then, (about a second before Lonnie could say 'five minutes twenty' just to annoy Isabel, which she was certainly planning on,) a large patch of the wall brightened into an image, and Lonnie backed away from the picture screen so that she could see it in the right perspective. It was a bit weird to see an alien communique as a television picture, instead of just hearing a voice, reading words, or seeing a full holograph in three dimensions. The picture showed an old Antarian woman, looking slightly feeble but otherwise healthy, sitting in a comfortable carved wooden chair. She had gray-blue skin, baby blue hair, and pale pink eyes, but Isabel gasped, recognizing the lines of her face from her human projection that they saw in the Pod Chamber more than a year before.

"Hello my dears. I am Alinda dil Liaret, widow of King Sanren, and mother of - well, it gets a bit complicated from there, but you know who I am by that much, don't you kids? There's so much that I want to say that I'm not sure I could ever say it - we're hopefully going to be sending this message with compressed and multiplexed video streams, in order to send much more material than could be said in the time it will take to actually send and receive the message, including seperate messages for - well, hopefully for each of you, though if I have to leave anybody out, plese don't be offended, it's not meant as a slight - either I wasn't able to get everybody done in time, or there were some of you who I don't know well enough yet and can't figure out what to say. But first off, for everybody...

"I'm very glad to hear that you all left Earth on time, and without anyone being badly hurt. I don't have all of the details yet, but that cheers my heart considerably, and from what I've heard of Miss Christin and the Rahlicx crew that young Larek has sent, I'm sure that they'll be able to keep you safe and bring you back here." Isabel noticed that Max was rubbing his calf, where he'd taken a particle blast just before they 'left Earth safely', a wound that could have been especially bad if they hadn't found Christin and allowed her to heal him. Now it was good as new though, but she wasn't surprised that the memory was hitting him a bit now. "We don't know exactly what Kivar's personal reaction was yet, but I don't think that he can justify remaining on Earth for long if he's not able to catch any of you - or retrieve the Granilith soon - and Christin has indicated that she thinks that will be secure enough where it is from any forces that one is able to bring to bear for the moment. Well done."

"Now that you are well on your way, hopefully the biggest issue of the trip will be the tedium of any long space voyage. Hopefully hearing from me and a few other people here on Sanctuary will help to relieve the boredom somewhat - I'm also including a few little computerized diversions in the transmission that are particularly possible with the humans and human hybrids here on Sanctuary, hoping that they will appeal to some of you. You're probably also anxious about what kind of reception you'll get here at Sanctuary. There are a few of the citizens for whom you're all controversial, and slightly infamous figures, but I think that most of the people here are eager to welcome you on your arrival. Trying to sort out what they'll expect out of you and how to fly in the face of those attitudes when you feel that you have to - that may be harder to figure out." Max groaned softly to himself.

"For myself, recent news, including hearing indirectly from you my children among the stars, has cheered my spirit and even heartened my aging body. Kivar appears to be losing his grip of terror over my homeland, which brings some hope for the future, even though the first traces of freedom have chaos and suffering walking lock step with them. Among the other worlds, too, developments are good - Gevina and Taliernar have signed treaties of peace, trade, and mutual assistance with Rahlicx and each other, and both have signalled more discretely their willingness to support the Liaretians and our rebellion in certain ways. Even the Breoll seem to be thinking that it might be better for them to put a knife in Kivar's back than watch his flank zealously for sneak attacks. Word from the further-flung outposts is more mixed - there is some increase in peace and prosperity, except for where Kivar's fleet arrive and try to make examples for the sake of Empire.

"But that's enough politics... and indeed, I'm not quite sure what more to say at this point, except that I can't wait to see each of you - Max, Isabel, Michael... Ava, Rath, Lonnie... Liz, Alex, Maria, and Kyle. And I'd love to hear, and see, more from each of you before you get here. Okay, maybe I should quit before I start babbling away about nonsense like an old crazy lady. I'll do my best to attach personal messages for each of you, and get Tess and Rayde to attach their own messages - also, I think you might know somebody down at the switchboard. And - well, I'll see if someone younger and more vigorous than I could go out and record a video tour of the city, to give you an idea of what you'll find waiting for you when the ship lands. Goodbye, dear hearts."

At this point the video froze into a still image, and Isabel touched a computer control near her seat, pulling up the list of attachments - there were certainly a lot of them, including many marked private for certain people. Max, meanwhile, had gone for the intercom.

"Variun - how long before we need to go into warp-space again? I want to record a voice mail back to Alinda."

"Umm - only eighty-five seconds, Max. Sorry."

"What?"

"Yep - it's not safe to stay in normal space for longer than we need to, even this far from Earth and in a relatively unlikely spot. A tracer could be closing in on our co-ordinates. We've sent out the other messages we needed to, and calculated our next hop. We **need** to get going on it, and I don't intend to let you overrule me on this. It's my ship and my call."

"Don't make a big deal, Max," Liz said softly, reaching out to hold his arm. "We can take the time and make a really good message for her."

"Yeah, right," Max said, and smiled. "Wanna hear what Tess has to say?"

"No, not yet," Alex shot back a little bit too quickly. "How about the video tour?"

"Yeah!" Isabel agreed. "That sounds fun."

"I'll go see if her Majesty had anything to say to me," Lonnie said, getting up. "Probably not anything that..." But she broke off, and just waved slightly as she left the room.

Liz reached out and tapped the attachment listing for the video tour. All of a sudden, a new image appeared - an unfamiliar cityscape of brightly colored buildings, each story appearing to be smaller than the one above it and a completely different hue. "Alright, hullo earthlings, and welcome to Landorin city." The 'camera' spun around as its operator did almost the perfectly cliche 'film yourself and wave' trick - a pretty Antarian girl of around their own age, as far as Isabel could tell. "Starting here in the heart of the freeport district, where the presence of the Rebel Sanctuary has been an open secret for something like the last twenty years - but sssh, don't tell Kivar's people!" She giggled. "I'm heading off towards the louse sales - no, they're not actually buying and selling insects, it's just what they're called and I don't know why..."

#

On the werewolf's private discussion file around this point:

A: Excellent. **Makes the Monty Burns tented fingers.** Christin lynched, another innocent townsperson. That leaves the two of us to four of them... three of them after we make tonight's kill. We've almost reached the parity that we need.

J: What are Monty Burns fingers?

A: Oh, never mind. I keep forgetting that you haven't seen Earth tv. Hopefully if we get the trade made for Earth media, there'll be some Simpsons that I can show you. What do you think? Who should we off?

J: Isabel and Max seem to be the smartest left, the potential leaders - but I'm more worried about catching us a psychic. Whoever that is, he or she could be accumulating a lot of info to destroy us with.

A: Yeah, or the psychic could have dreamed about people who've already been killed, which makes the info worthless. Well, Michael could be the psychic, it sort of fits with why he's been pretty quiet. You wanna take him out and see?

J: Alright. Before we make that official, though, there's something else I wanted to talk to you about.

Alex: Come on, guys - it's already taken days for you to get this much back and forthing in, and people are really waiting for the end of night number three so that they can keep playing. Wrap it up, like, _now_.

A: Alright, Official on Michael - and J, whatever you're thinking of, just give it a try.

J: Confirm - we take out Michael.

#

"Hey, sweetie," Alex said, stepping into his cabin. Isabel was sitting on the edge of the bed and watching a video playing on the wall. "Going through it again?"

"Umm... yeah, what can I say?" Isabel replied, actually wiping a little bit of wetness out of the corner of her eye. "Can't believe that she went to the trouble of recording a message just for me - and one for you, and everybody else." She sighed slightly as Alex sat down. "Pause playback." The video of Grandma Alinda stopped playing out and froze still. "And - and she knows so much about us - about my adoptive parents, what life was like for us in Roswell - even how obsessive I get about organizing stuff and things like perfect Christmases."

"Yeah, that's pretty cool," Alex agreed. His own message had been much lighter on that kind of personal detail, which only seemed natural to him since he wasn't a surrogate daughter figure to the old queen or anything - very possibly a potential son-in-law or grandson-in-law or something like that. "Tell you what, why don't we try recording a video letter back to her and just ad lib it or something? See what we get? If it sucks, well, we can wipe it out and start over with a script and so on."

"Hmm... okay, yeah, that sounds great," Isabel agreed. "Computer, are you capable of video-recording us right here? Just from the perspective of the same place on the wall where the current file was playing?"

"Affirmative, video pickup is available from that spot."

"Umm... how's my hair?" Isabel asked.

"I am not programmed for esthetic judgements on matters of personal style."

"I wasn't talking to you, computer," Isabel said tightly. "Alex?"

"Alinda isn't going to care too much about what your hair looks like, Isabel," Alex pointed out first. But he could see in her eyes that **she** cared - this was sort of a first impression she would be making on somebody who was already very important to their lives, and would probably be more important still in the years to come. "It looks alright, actually - I always love you in a ponytail. Think your mascara might be a bit smudged, though."

"Oh, right." Isabel shuffled over to one of the bedside drawers to pull out a mirror and adjust herself. Alex thought of asking why she even bothered to put on makeup while they were on board ship, but decided that this would probably be the wrong time to ask, if not a conversation that he just shouldn't get into ever. Soon Isabel had decided that she looked presentable, and Alex would certainly have to agree. "Alright, begin recording."

The computer beeped softly and showed a little red light on the wall, probably both as visual confirmation of the record function, and to show exactly where they should look at. "Hello Alinda. Thought that we'd make a video letter together to send you, because - well, we do just about everything together lately, so why not this? Thank you so much for putting all the effort and little personal touches into the file batch you sent us - it was really very reassuring, and helped let us all know what we've gotten ourselves into. Landorin city looks very pretty, and a lot of fun - just how big is the rebel headquarters in the midst of all that bustling metro, anyway? Well, I guess we'll be able to judge that for ourselves. Umm..."

Alex squeezed Isabel's hand and took over when it was clear that she was faltering. "I'd especially like to thank you on my behalf, and for all of my friends who are only human, for the hospitality that you've shown us already, Alinda. Hope it's alright that I'm just calling you that - get the impression that you wouldn't like 'your Majesty' or 'my Lady' - and even 'Mrs Liaret' seems oddly formal in this case. Well, anyway, Maria and Kyle and I - we're nothing really to do with your family, except that we got to know the Royal Four while they were there in Roswell, but happy to be coming along for this big trip.

"Tedium is actually starting to become a big problem - a week and a half have gone by, with more than four and a half months left in the trip - but hearing from you was definitely a pick me up," he continued. "We've been playing a lot of games with the computer systems on board the ship, and still learning a lot about Antar and the nearby worlds, the language of course, and all sorts of stuff that's in the computer library. For instance, we've been learning recently that Landorin is on the planet Vrelayan, a fairly remote world out on the trade routes leading from the Antar cluster out towards Sector 371 and the Krevnarr Oligarchy. I guess that's probably part of the reason why you set the base up there - that all the merchant convoys going through disguise the ships coming and going on rebel business, and it's a place both beyond Kivar's direct rule and where he wouldn't immediately suspect you of going."

"I've been thinking about what you said regarding the choices we'll have to make when we get there," Isabel said, jumping in after a fairly short pause and changing the subject. "How some people will still identify me with Vilandra even now that we know that things aren't nearly so simple, and will be watching me to see what I do next when I get here." She took a deep breath. "I want to know more about my gift with entering people's dreams, and if there are any kind of cultural roles that carries with it in Antarian societies. Max has been learning about all of the traditions to do with the healer's powers from Christin, but there's nobody who can really tell me about mine. I have this idea of working to help people who have - who have recurring bad dreams or other issues because of problems in their lives that they've never faced or resolved properly, but I'm not even completely sure that Antarians have such syndromes in the same way that humans do. Depending on the limits of my abilities, I might even be able to use them to carry important messages for the rebels I suppose."

"As far as Alex and I, well... we're very much in love, although we haven't actually... consummated our feelings physically yet, but that will **probably** happen before we arrive, if only because we've been thrown into the same bed and there's four and a half months to go." Alex chuckled at the way she'd put that. "But we're not quite ready to get engaged or anything yet, and I did wonder if that would pose a problem with the two of us wanting to live together when we arrive at Landorin. Would it be beneath my honor as a princess of the house of Liaret, or something? Do Antarians even have the concept of living in sin? There's so much that's never really explained in the cultural texts in the computer, and I haven't quite gotten up the nerve to ask Christin or any of the crew."

"Let's see. Alex wants to become just as much of a computer genius with Antarian systems as with Earth processor chips. He's started looking up some of the information that's available here on the molecular light valve circuits that you guys use, some of the basic thinking node architectures that make them up, and a bit of the programming that's more intensive than just telling the computer how to play a particular board game or make chicago-style pizza. He's going to be amazing at it, I can just tell, even if he says that he's still only at the Antarian equivalent of sixth grade level."

"Glad to hear that you're in good health and high spirits, and it was nice to hear from Raydeleen, and even Tess. I was a bit surprised to hear her talking about leaving Vrelayan before we even get there, and signing up with the suicide corps marines. I think that Kyle is trying to figure out what he wants to say to her about that, but as for me... I do hope I get a chance to see her again, and I think that Max's son should get a chance to grow up knowing his true birth mother, even if they don't spend too much time together."

"One more question, and this might sound odd - of all the humans who are living in Landorin, is there anybody who was actually on earth as recently as 1989? I'm just asking because that was the year that we emerged out of our incubation pods, and it would be an interesting link back to home to be able to meet someone there who was part of regular Earth society and knows the same sort of time period that I remember."

"Alright, I guess that's enough to tell you about for now. We'll record a postscript before sending this off if there's anything else we want to tell you or ask you. Goodbye and hope to see you soon!" They both waved. "Computer, end letter and file as 'Isabel and Alex to Alinda, number one.'"

"Saved and filed."

"Good enough." Isabel turned to Alex slightly and smiled. "Should I have let you talk more?"

"No, I think I was okay with that, for now. Do you want to go get something to eat?"

"Yeah, and then we'll see about gathering what's left of the townspeople of West Roswell back together. I think the werewolves have struck again."

"Oh, no."

#

"So, the body of Michael, sometime lover of the werewolf girl Maria, was found in the morning," Alex said. "Townsperson. Day four starts now." He slurped up a spoonful of chicken soup. "Go to it."

"Yes. I have an announcement I would like to make at this point," Jevrok said, stepping forward. "Please it you to know that I am the town psychic. I must inform you at this point that Max and Kyle are remaining wolves. I was also able to determine that Michael was a townsperson, but..."

"Now hold on just a second!" Kyle exclaimed. "I'm the **real** psychic, which means that you must be a wolf, Jevrok - I'm not sure if you're the last or not. If... if you're not, then." He gulped. "Then it must be you as well, sweet Ava, because I've cleared Max and Isabel through my dreams. Also confirmed Lonnie as town, before she got attacked."

"Huh," Max said, looking around at both of the supposed psychics. "Well, I guess it won't be much of a surprise to say that I agree with Kyle - fits in a bit too neatly with Jevrok's supposed dreams, but I am **not** a wolf, so I have to say that he is. Vote Jevrok."

"And even though Kyle didn't clearly accuse me," Ava said... "I'm sorry, I'll have to vote for you, Kyle. Jevrok's claim seems to ring truer to me."

"Wow," Isabel breathed. "And you two psychics will vote against each other?"

"One moment," Jevrok murmured. "Ava, if you believe me, perhaps we should vote Max instead of Kyle? It does not matter which of them goes first - Kyle's dreams will have no more authority once they see that Max is indeed hairy."

"No, we should take Kyle out, if we can," Ava said determinedly.

"Because you think that I'd be more likely to vote for Kyle than for my own brother?" Isabel asked. Ava shrugged. "Well, I guess the whole thing comes down to my own judgement call... unless there's only one wolf, and it's Jevrok, in which case I can make a mistake and we can still get him the next time, huh?"

"But we can't count on that," Max said.

"No, I can't," she agreed. "If there are two wolves and I vote to lynch the townsperson, then it'll be two wolves to two town. The wolves will attack one of the town in the night, and then they'll be able to control the voting tomorrow."

"Right," Alex agreed. "You can take all the time you need to think about this, though."

"Well, let me see what I can work through by talking it out," she said. "Jevrok made his psychic claim first, and... and that seems to give him a little credibility." Jevrok smiled, and Kyle groaned softly. "The real psychic would know that he _had_ to get his information out this time - in fact, perhaps he should have come forward last round, as that might have helped to save Christin." She stopped and reconsidered. "In fact... Jevrok, how much of this information did you have last round?"

"I... I knew that Max was a wolf, and Michael was not," he said. "Dreamed about Kyle this night period."

"So you didn't want to come forward, even though you could have identified Max, because you wanted to try and find out if there was a second wolf?" she said. Jevrok nodded. "And Kyle?"

"I knew that Max was alright, and about Lonnie, which had already become useless info," Kyle said. "So I had only one confirmed town to offer if I stepped forward."

"Right." Isabel sighed. "I guess what this all comes down to is how much I trust you, and I'll have to think about that for a while." She turned, about to leave the game room, and then suddenly whirled back around to face Kyle. "I **do** trust you. Vote Jevrok!"

"Are - are you sure?" Kyle asked. "Why so sure all of a sudden?"

"Don't try to talk her out of it, Kyle," Max insisted.

"Because of the chess game," Isabel said. "You started it, and that put Maria out of the running. I don't think you'd have done that, if you were a wolf, and knew that she was a wolf."

"Don't be so sure," Kyle muttered. "Ava was in that game too." He looked suspiciously over at her.

"But she didn't get things started," Isabel insisted, sounding more and more certain of herself. "It would have been suspicious to back out of things at that point once you had suggested it, and by going along with the flow, even if she sacrificed Maria, she'd gain credibility for herself. Nobody's suspected her until now, after all." Kyle nodded agreement. "Maybe she even tried to lose very subtly, so that Lonnie would get voted out without her being obvious about it. But I'm sure of my vote. Jevrok."

"Alright - are you guys sure of your vote too?" Alex asked. "We might as well see about wrapping this day up early."

"I'll stick with it," Max said. "Think we've caught ourselves another wolf."

"Yeah," Kyle agreed. "Do it."

"Okay... yes." Alex let out a breath. "Jevrok, a second wolf, has been lynched." A cheer went up in the room.

"I don't think we need to stick with the night secrets any more," Kyle put in. "This is almost over. I'll try to dream about Ava tonight."

"Hmm, alright." Alex thought about this. "Everybody put their heads down, don't look. Wolves, point to your pick for getting attacked in the middle of the night." There was a brief pause. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Kyle, you don't wake up from your dream this time. You've been killed by a werewolf."

"Vote Ava," Max and Isabel repeated in unison, not even looking up.

"Darnit," Ava said with a laugh. "Well, nicely played, you guys, and can we go again?"

"No, not for a little while yet," Max said with a laugh. "Once was fun, but killing people off over and over again without a break could get psychologically bad in a place like this."

"We could do Haggle instead, and trade stuff," Alex suggested. "Or - ooh, or maybe Lonnie and I could work out a game of party diplomacy."

Isabel raised an eyebrow at that. "You eager to spend more time with her, now?"

"Not as such, sweetie," Alex assured her. "Just, she's got a clever mind, and I remember playing 'extreme diplomacy' with her back when we were still on the run back on Earth. It could be fun, but if you don't want me to be alone with her..."

"We'll work it all out _later_," Max suggested. "I'm going to go tell Liz that I actually survived." And he headed back out of the room.

"Yeah, I didn't realize that we were going to get into the finale so soon," Alex said. "Lonnie, Michael, and Maria will probably be sorry that they missed it."

"I turned on the video recorder," Jevrok said with a slight smile. "They'll be able to review everything that way."

"Hmm, interesting." Ava sighed. "When I said that you should go ahead with whatever you were thinking of, I didn't think it would be a fake psychic role claim."

"Would we have been better off if I had let Kyle speak first?"

"Maybe a little," Kyle pointed out. "Even if they believed me, I wasn't sure that you were both wolves."

"But we'd have tried one of them, if neither came up with a counter-claim," Isabel pointed out. "That was certainly interesting, having the whole game rest on my judgement of you, Kyle. I'm glad I made the right choice."

"What?" Maria exclaimed from the door. "We missed it all?"

"Fire up that instant replay, Jevrok," Alex suggested. The steward adjusted a computer control, and on one of the walls, the scene from five minutes ago began playing, with Alex announcing how Michael had died.


	4. Chapter 4

The second time around, the 'wake-crossing' sensation of re-inserting in normal space didn't surprise anybody. "Alright, orienting on Sanctuary," Christin announced over the intership, in her capacity as communications officer. "Sending out all messages in the outgoing queue." There was a pause. "Send sixty percent complete... send is complete. Turning communications array to receive any incoming messages."

"We don't expect anything new from Sanctuary at this point, do we?" Max asked captain Variun.

"I don't think that there's anything really 'expected' for you guys, though since it's been so long, Alinda or someone else might have wanted to post an update," he said. "I'll probably have some news about the state of the pursuit, any intel they have about search patterns that we'll need to evade as we plot our next step of the course."

"And the trader ship?"

"They won't be messaging us over the tachy-wave," he said, "or at least, it'll be to say that something's gone wrong, and they might not even be able to then. The plan is just for them to re-insert close enough for regular microwave-based communications to be practical - within half a million kilometers, by human measurements."

"Around the same as the distance from Earth to the moon," Max filled in, and he nodded. Max was staying well out of the way in the cockpit. "So, is there any chance that we'll be able to dock with the trader ship and go aboard, just to have a look around? I mean, everybody's getting a little tired of the same rooms and cabins in here."

"Hmm... we'll ask, see what they say," Variun said after a moment. "Flaiisar should be able to handle a docking maneuver, right pilot?" Flaiisar waved with a confident gesture. "And we're far enough away that I don't think we need to worry about not spending too much time outside of warp space."

"Good, that's a relief," Max admitted. "So, do you have one of those detectors that can see other ships travelling through nearby warp space? Michael and Isabel mentioned tracking approaching enemy ships from the outpost on Stallynfruss."

"Actually, no Max, as much as I'd like one, there's no way to get that sensitive a warp-space sensor on a small ship like this one," Variun told him with a small smile. "We've got a sort of a warp proximity alert, which can tell when something's approaching us from warp - with a range of about a tenth of a parsec, which only works out to a few minutes warning at typical speeds." He paused, as if allowing for the possibility that once he had mentioned the proximity alert, it would immediately go off. But there was nothing. "If we get anything on that, be sure that I'll tell you. Why don't you wait with Liz and your friends? It could take an hour or more - seriously this time."

"Okay, okay, I get the hint," Max said. "Getting out of the way." He poked his head inside the 'royal cabin', and found that Liz was sitting in there alone. "Hey, I thought you'd be with some of the others."

"Nah, I just didn't feel like..." Liz shrugged slightly. "Why did you check in here first then?"

"Well, it was on my way, and I thought that you might have invited Michael and Maria inside." Liz nodded in response to that possibility.

"No transmission receiving yet?"

"No, they're not sure what we'll get or when," Max said, going over to sit on the bed himself and hold her close. "Also when and if this trading ship is going to show up."

"Ahh, so that's this stop then? I mean, if it happens."

"Probably, yeah." Max sat there with her for a moment. "I asked if we'd be able to dock with the trading ship and go aboard her."

"Oooh." Liz shivered slightly. "Would I have to?"

"Now, that wasn't quite the reaction I expected," Max admitted, "Why wouldn't you want to? We've all been talking about how frustrated we are, being stuck inside this small ship..."

"Yeah, I know, but - but not sure that going to a, a Tleonic ship would really make me feel that much better," she admitted. "Antarians and shapeshifters... I mean, I know that they're aliens, but they look and talk like people, and they're familiar by now. But - well, I hate to sound bigoted or anything, but have you seen the images of Tleons in the ship's computer?"

"Oooh," Max admitted, and sighed. "No, didn't think to look, actually. Are they all weird and scary?"

"Actual bug-eyed monsters with tentacles," Liz admitted. "Straight out of a horror movie or something like that."

"Hmm." Max considered that. "Well, I certainly understand and respect if you choose to stay behind - always assuming that they do show up, and give us permission to dock." He took a deep breath. "But I'm not going to to let that sort of thing stop me. After all, there'll be more exotic species than Antarians in Landorin as well, and we'll probably have to get used to being around them." He put his hand on the far side of Liz's face and turned her around a bit so that he could stare into her deep brown eyes. "You know that Variun and Christin wouldn't even consider letting us go if they thought there was the slightest possibility that the Tleons would harm us, right? No matter what they look like, with bug eyes and tentacles and all, they're just people trying to make their way through the universe. Not saying that they're all good and pure of heart, but they're not nasty just because they're alien, and probably on a long-term trading mission they'll be eager to meet some new people just as much as we are."

"So, in other words, you're going to try and guilt trip me into being more open minded about the tentacularly gifted?" Liz joked.

"Probably couldn't hurt. Just think how you'd feel if you woke up with tentacles of your own one morning," he kidded her back.

"Okay, okay, well - we'll see." Just then there was a chime.

"Hullo, Max?" That was Christin's voice.

"Yeah, did the traders show up?" No, that was the wrong question. "Have we got a signal on the warp sensor, I mean?"

"No, but there's an incoming transmission, on Liaretian channels."

"Sanctuary?"

"Nope, Stellynfrus."

"The place where Michael and Isabel dropped Tess off?" Liz said, her leg starting to shake with nervous energy. "Why would they be sending to us?"

"I don't know, Liz," Christin answered, "but it's from the outpost leader where Michael helped fight off Kivar's ships, and he's asking to talk to you, Max." She sounded a bit put out, which Max could understand. "Audio signal, patch it through?"

"Umm - alright," Max said. So this would be a live, or nearly live conversation, instead of just messages being beamed off hither and yon. "Hello, this is Max Evans."

"Hello Max, Gird here," the answer came in. "This is important. We've spotted a warp interference network being laid out in the space between your current co-ordinates and planet Vrelayan."

"Oh, frak us all," Max muttered. "Kivar's people?"

"Not directly - it seems to be a Breeolyn contingent setting it up. Not sure if they want to hand you over to Kivar if they catch you, or offer you up to the highest bidder, torture you for their own amusement, or what - but you do _not_ want to be caught."

"No, of course not," Max said. "Why wouldn't you tell my comm officer or captain about this? I trust them implicitly."

"Oh, sorry - just was my first instinct to go with someone who I knew I could trust with the intel."

"The conversation's being recorded," Liz put in. "I'll work on patching Christin in, and the cockpit."

"Do that," he said. "Alright, if we can't continue on towards Sanctuary, then where do we go?" He had a sudden bad thought. "We're waiting for a rendezvous with Tleonic long distance merchants. Could they possibly be in on the same ploy?"

"No, Tleons would never work with Breoll - or with Kivar either," Gird assured them. "You're safe enough talking with them, and they should be warned about this net, in case they or other independent ships should happen into it by accident. They're as likely as not heading the other way, but still."

"Right."

"And as far as what to do, I'd suggest heading for the Kaalto outpost," he continued. "They're right up against the net co-ordinates, and on the same side of it as you are. And friendly - they're under Larek's protection, so they'll work with your crew. I think that they should be able to figure out some way to run the blockade, though it might take time."

"Hmm." Max considered this. Even more time before they arrived at their final destination - but they could spend some of them at an outpost, which would be even better than a trading ship at least, and... "Okay, your warning is given, and thank you. Anything else? We probably shouldn't speak for longer than necessary - the communication might be found."

"Yes, of course. Send my greetings to Michael and Isabel. Vvantas settlement, Stellynfrus 3 signing off."

"Okay," Max said, and paused. "Christin, Variun? Are you on with me?"

"Yes, sir," Christin replied immediately. "Preparing a tight-beam message to Kaalto to warn them that we're coming."

"And we're working on the warp-space trajectory," Variun agreed. "Should be able to make it in one more jump, around eleven days long."

"Okay, good enough." Max took a deep breath. "Computer, give me what information is available on the Kaalto outpost." He'd have asked one of the crew directly, but they would all be busy at a time like this."

"I'll call Isabel and Michael in," Liz said with a small smile. Once that was done, she turned back to Max. "What's the deal with the Breeol again? I know that Alinda mentioned them, but - wasn't Nicholas a Breeoll?"

"Yeah, I think so," Max agreed. "They're offshoot Antarians, like the Rahlicx and the others, but smaller and tougher because Breeolyn is a cold and forbidding planet. That's why Nicholas was in a twelve-year old boy's skin - he wouldn't have been able to fill up one for a human adult. Their politics are very cutthroat and totalitarian - with the power balance shifting often, but always held by only one or a very few people at the top. Generally, they've been pretty consistent if reluctant allies of Kivar, but I certainly hoped that they wouldn't pull a stunt like this on us." He hesitated. "Dammit, I should have asked Gird exactly where this warpspace 'net' is."

"I think he attached it to the message," Liz said. "Smart of him."

"Hey." The door signal chimed, and Liz let Isabel, Alex, and Ava in. Michael and Maria followed a few seconds later, with Lonnie right behind. It was quickly clear that not everybody would fit inside Max and Liz's cabin.

"We could head out into the rec room," Liz suggested. "Well, most of us at least."

Just then, there was a whistle over the intership. "_Now_ we've got a signal on the warp sensor," Christin told them.

"Oh, boy, everything happening at once," Michael put in. "Big surprise."

"Well, we don't need to worry about that until the ship arrives," Max said. "Assuming it's the traders we've been expecting, Variun or Christin will talk to them first, and let us know if any of us can go over. Meantime, talking about this blockade thing and Kaalto outpost is good. I'm in the rec room." And he was, after pushing past a few people who were just standing around in doorways or in the corridor. "So, there's about eight hundred thousand people at the outpost, mostly Rahlicx, around forty thousand Klenthorrs, who are kind of humanoid-ish but don't look much - like Antarians or Rahlicx. But apprently they're good people with a strong work ethic and some very useful special senses..."

#

Liz reached out to hold Max's hand as the airlock opened leading from their ship to a much larger and completely different environment. Well, not that different in the sense that it still had oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere that they could breathe. The difference in 'atmosphere' was more metaphorical, something to do with the light level, the noise level, the sense of space in the cargo bay that they walked into together.

And then, just as Liz had said, there were the bug-eyed aliens with lots of tentacles.

"MucksIffinz!" The first Tleon exclaimed loudly, and it took Max a moment to realize that the being was trying to pronounce his name. "MuxEffins? We vurrah glad to meet yo."

"It's nice to meet you, yes. I'm Max Evans, this is Liz Parker, and what's your name?" The trader had been speaking Antarian, but with enough of an accent that it was hard for him to follow what was being said. Too bad they hadn't thought to take a translator that was programmed for Tleon dialect, or whatever this was called - if they even knew too much about it. Well, probably they had, if they'd been able to communicate with the Tleon ship at all... no, that didn't necessarily follow. The crew of their ship could have used translators into the Tleon's own language, or communicated via a data stream in some common conceptual code.

"Is Garragon, and opposite is Shralavell." Another Tleon, hanging from a sort of lamppost above them, made a wave. "Welcome babord, LizParkorr." There was a slight pause. "You human from Urth, righ Liz?"

"Yeah, pretty... pretty much," Liz agreed, not wanting to go into the queen's soul story with these guys. "Thank you for asking. What's your home planet like?"

"Garragon hatched up onna ship," Shralavell said. "Dozzin like ta talk bout it. I from Tleon five. Nice place, kinda cold though. Have to be careful when swimming that the Vergukar doesn't freeze up over you."

"Hmm?" Liz looked over at Max, but he hadn't caught the word of whatever Tleons liked to swim in either.

"So, we have lotsa nice Earth food ta offer," Garragon put in. "To show hostepality. How about rose beefed sanwitches an oranges juice?"

"Umm... that's really generous, thanks, but the food dispensers on our ship are great at Earth food," Liz told him. "You don't really need to go to any trouble to..."

"No, is okay," Garragon said, reaching out to gently hold her wrist and urge her along. "Great food. You not say no. Hostepality!"

Liz looked back at Max, a bit of panic in her face, but the wide smile he gave her as he followed actually made her relax a bit. She saw Michael and Maria coming through next, and a group of three Tleons converging around the airlock, and felt a bit sorry for them.

After suffering through the 'hostepality' of sandwiches and juice, (which Liz described later as 'not great, but not as bad as my Uncle Roy's hamburger bun pizzas',) they were finally able to settle down to the actual trading business, with the Tleon's Exchanges officer. Sitting in the exchange office, Liz still right next to him, Max fished inside his grey t-sweater, and brought out a small velvetey bag from an inner pocket, something that the steward had given him before they went over.

"Umm, here," he said, handing the bag over into one of the Tleon's tentacles. "Careful opening it." He probably needn't have offered the warning. The tentacles were obviously very good with fine detail work, and the mouth of the bag was pulled open. Instead of emptying it out onto a table, the alien withdrew the object from inside and held it up - a greenish-blue cut stone.

"Izz thiss really a Centaurian emeralld?" it inquired.

"Absolutely authentic, I promise you," Max said sincerely. "The ship made a pit stop at Theta Centauri on the way over to Earth to pick us up. You interested in the trade?"

"Csertainly! What do you wissh?"

"First, about two liters of red beta two lumitronic psycho-lubricant," Liz asked.

"That can be arranged. Annd?"

Max leaned over towards the officer. "What earth media do you have in your ship's library that we can copy?"

Its buggy eyes glinted with a kind of fierce glee and its crooked mouth opened. With a fierce gesture the Tleon tapped a computer control button. It must have known what to expect in order to call up the required program with just one button, Max guessed. On the wall behind it, several hundred little rectangles lit up in a grid, each switching to a new display every three seconds or so. TV programs, movies, photographs, newspaper and magazine articles, web pages and more all appeared, as closely as Max could tell.

"All of this, and more, you can copy. Hhave we a deal?"

"I rather think that we do," Max agreed, smiling.

The Tleon offered him a tentacle to shake to seal their understanding.

#

Personal log.

Well, we're on our way again, heading towards Kaalto to find out how we're going to be able to run the Breeolyn blocade looking for us - always assuming that we'll be able to find a way, of course. Everybody seems to be in fairly high spirits, though - partly because of the media batch that we got from trading with the Tleons. There's all kinds of stuff there, just about anything I could think of unless it came from the last two and a half years or so. I've been going through the complete series of 'Doogie Howser', just for memory lane laughs. Isabel looks at me funny if she walks in when I'm in the middle of an episode, but who cares. She'd rather watch Dallas!

The computer seems to be working even faster than before, too, thanks to whatever other stuff it is the crew had Max ask for in the trade. At some point, when I learn enough about Antarian lumitronics, I'm going to have to try and figure out exactly what red beta two psycho-lubricants do to them. Gorrv, the engineer, has been going around pretty much the whole ship, opening access ports in the walls and adding in little shot glass-sized doses of the stuff here and there. Keeps things interesting, sure enough.

Talked with Lonnie a bit about the idea of setting up a new party game based around diplomacy, and we tossed around a few ideas, but nobody really seems that excited about going ahead with it, so I'm leaving things be. Certainly don't want to actually get Isabel jealous of the time that I'm spending with Lonnie - not that I like her that way at all. Though I won't deny that little joke of Lonnie's about a threesome from the first time I met her keeps popping into my head at the oddest times. Dammit, head, I don't need to deal with this kind of stuff!

A few of us, including Max, Liz, Christin, Flai and me, have been going over the data that Gird sent over about the Breeolyn interference network, trying to see if we can find and prepare to use any weaknesses in the system before we even arrive at Kaalto - though we'll definitely check with them before trying any such notion. Just, always good to be forearmed if at all possible, and this is about all that we can really do about the situation while we're still in warp space. Isabel's been going over some of the stuff in the ship's library about Kaalto itself, which is very comprehensive - this is one of Larek's main courier ships apparently, and Kaalto is one of their usual destinations, so someone loaded detailed information about the layout of the outpost, commercial franchises and other concessions available, even where the best guest accomodations are, and video feed of the town concourse, which seems impressive both in terms of size and the variety of attractions it boasts.

Well, that's about all I can think of saying, so I'll close this log entry now. Maybe try working on adapting the inform interpreter, so that I can play the Zork images we got from the Tleon database with voice recognition. That should be fun.

#

"Okay, I feel like I'm not sure exactly what this thing interferes with," Liz said, moaning slightly and taking a long suck at her raspberry milkshake. "Is there any other way that you can explain it to me?"

"I... I don't know any of the actual physics behind it," Flaiisar put in, "but the way it was explained to me back in high school was that it changes... changes the characteristic velocity of the warp space level that you're flying through. Way downwards. And then, because the warp space engines are designed to operate at certain speeds, the change in characteristic velocity interferes with the manifold compressor operation. It fries out before you get through the interference field, and if the ship's systems aren't carefully protected from overloads, which I don't think ours are sufficiently, then it could fry out everything - well, except emergency life support. Then it's just a question of waiting for the Breeol to turn off the field, warp over, and take us in."

"Okay, then..." Kyle started, and Lonnie turned to him.

"Valenti, if you really want to play that baseball game, then ask Rath or somebody, okay? I want to stay and work on this thing..."

"Hey!" Kyle exclaimed in response. "Why do you assume that I'm about to say something so trivial? I could have an actually useful idea, and I sure **think** that I do..."

"About warp manifold compressors and interference fields? Yeah, right."

"Come on, Lonnie," Liz chided. "What's the notion, Kyle?"

"Well - if this thing affects warp space travel only - it's not a very thick field, is it? It hardly could be, in order to stretch as wide as it would have to to keep us from going around."

"Hmm... something like half a light-day at its thinnest point," Flai agreed. "but still, even though we could punch through it at high enough warp speeds that we only spend a few seconds inside it, that'd be enough."

"No, that's exactly my point," Kyle put in. "What if we **don't** use the space-warp, or whatever it is? Just go through it on conventional drives, pushing through normal Einsteinian space. How long would that take?"

"Hmm." Flaiisar pulled up a little calculator pad program on the table and started punching through some numbers. "Accelerating from a standing start - eight days. But if the Breeol have a warp detector on the nearest ship helping to generate the field, they could cut a warp course around the far side of it and intercept us just before we finished. It's much too risky."

"Is there any way to avoid starting from stop-still?" Liz asked hopefully. "Come out of warp at whatever relative speed our shields can handle the cosmic rays at - around point 3 C, right?"

"Point two seven, actually - I wouldn't want to try anything better in that part of space," Flaiisar said. "And yes, it's possible to use the warp fields to generate sub-light velocities, if you're careful. But - we'd still be taking risks."

"I don't think we're going to find any completely safe way through this, Flai," Christin told him. "This is the basis for a reasonable plan. We'll put it to the captain, and the officials at Kaalto when we get there." She smiled slightly. "Thanks, Kyle. It might have taken us a long time to think of that one."

"You're welcome," he said, and shot a 'so there' look over at Lonnie, who was still acting slightly stunned.

"So, can we take a break at this point?" Liz said, already standing up and grinning.

"Nobody was stopping you from taking a break three minutes ago. Liz squealed slightly and headed out of the rec room to go find Max.

#

"Yeah, I lent it to Alex, but don't worry," Maria said to Michael, pulling on a skirt and going over to the door. Just head right over and get _oww_!"

The sound finishing that sentence was because Maria had hit the 'open' button next to the door while already moving towards it at a noticeable speed - and the door had not opened up, even a little bit. Maria's head had found this out first. "Hey, what's wrong with this thing?"

"Try pushing the button a few times in a row," Michael suggested. "Maybe it's stuck."

"It's a touch-sensitive computer control, Michael," Maria said witheringly. "It can't be stuck."

"Well, if you're such an expert on the computers, then _you_ tell me why the door won't open!"

"I'm not an expert or anything, I just know a stupid suggestion when I hear it." Maria tried pressing the contact again, and then banged on the door. "Hello, anybody out there?"

When she didn't get any reply, Michael went over to the communicator controls on the bedside table. "Umm... hello, Gorrv?"

"Yeah, what can I do you for, Michael?"

"Helping to get the door of our cabin open would help."

"It's not working with the usual touch contact?"

"Umm... no, I wouldn't be asking you if it were that easy, would I?"

"No - no, I guess not. Well, just a moment. I'll try the outside override, and if that doesn't work... then it's off to the system diagnostics I suppose. This has never happened before."

"I'm not sure if that's comforting or not," Michael said. "Thanks for your help though."

"Just lovely," Maria said. "Welcome to the world of alien technology, where even a door has system diagnostics."

"Well, if it's got a touch-sensitive computer control, why not?" he said, standing up. "Look, I get why you're frustrated. It's an annoying situation - and also a slightly funny one..."

"Hi, Michael?" It wasn't Gorrv's voice coming from the door - but Max. "Got a moment?"

"Plenty of time, if you can just get the door open," Michael said with a laugh. "It won't go from in here."

"Huh." There was a pause. "Oh, hi Gorrv." More faint noises from outside.

"What's going on?" Maria wailed in exasperation.

"Umm... the override didn't work," Gorrv admitted. "Just hang on - we'll get you guys out. There isn't anything you really need?"

"No I guess not," Maria admitted with a grumble. "Bathroom, food and water dispenser inside here. That'll last us for a little while."

"Not to mention the bed," Michael kidded. Maria hurrumphed at that - and went off to flop on the bed anyway.

It was nearly two hours before they figured out how to get the door open, and then longer before it would open and close on command happily. The problem turned out to have been an old computer virus hidden among the Tleon database, inside one of the computer games that Kyle and Alex had been playing, actually, which had managed to jump out of the emulator routine and do a little random damage to the ship's programming. Once Gorrv had the hint, he was able to clean up and restore all the system commands from backups.

"Probably a good thing that we found out now, rather than in a real emergency," he commented under his breath. "And that it didn't affect the warp manifold or the life support, obviously."

#

Alex went up to Isabel as she sat in the observation bubble. "Looking for something?"

"Yeah, the planet that we're heading to," she admitted. They were out of warp space now, and for the first time since leaving Earth system, could see a nearby star as a bright sun. "Kaltonus. I know that they say it won't be visible to the naked eye yet, just thought I'd take a look."

"Alright." Alex wrapped an arm around her. "Don't worry. We're going to get through this."

"Oh, yeah, I know that," she assured him blithely. "If there's anything that I'm worried about, it's not Breeolyn setting up a blocade for us. Kyle's idea was a good one, I think it'll be the key to us giving them the slip." She paused. "Any idea how long we're going to stay at Kaalto?"

"You're asking me?" Alex laughed. "Hard to say. I was wondering if they'd want to just check in quickly and then push on through before the Breeol have figured out that we're here, but that doesn't seem to be the idea. Maybe a few days - just long enough for the guys manning the blocade to think that maybe we're just going to stay put, and report to their bosses that maybe they should send ships in to try and take us off - and then we go when they're not really expecting it."

"Okay, cool." Isabel smiled, and kissed the side of his face. "I'm going to ask about getting quarters to stay in on the outpost for us - a big, private suite or something. See if my princessly status actually gets me any authority for demands like that."

"Hehehe, sounds great by me," Alex said. After a moment he realized that Isabel was still sort of looking at him. "Is there more to this?"

"Well, sort of, yes, but I'm not sure if I should say it."

"Why? I thought you could tell me anything."

"Well, I know I could, but it's something that would be better if I left it for the right moment."

"Ohh, okay." Alex considered. "Yeah, okay, I'm not sure I know what you're talking about, but I'll drop it."

"Good." She squeezed his hand with her own. Suddenly a little beeping sounded next to them.

"Hey, guys, there's another batch message in from Sanctuary, and one of the video letters is for the two of you."

"Oooh, great," Isabel said. "Is there some way to play it up here? I don't think we're about to get interrupted."

"Yeah, there should be. Just a moment." All of a sudden a little stand popped up in front of them, and the familiar picture of Queen Alinda, now sitting in a different room and a different chair, appeared in the thin air above the stand - must be some sort of semi-holo projector, Alex figured.

"Hi, Isabel, and hi Alex," she said, laughing slightly. "It was great to get your letter. The two of you seem like a darling couple, and I wish you all of the best together. Can hardly wait to meet you in person especially, Alex. Let's see now - might as well answer some of the questions you posed to me.

"Resistance headquarters - is more of a state of mind than a specific building or buildings, I'm afraid. At least, if there's a permanent place for it, they haven't told me. Generally there are a number of connected complexes here in the same city block where I live where - a lot of Rebel business tends to get done, and a few other little clusters of offices scattered here and there, not to mention a number of single dwellings and other 'temporary' places. Staying on the move and keeping things vague is a good way of staying ahead of the game on the few times that somebody we don't want to know about us comes snooping around. Even my own apartments come with a set of ownership papers indicating that they're owned and used by Alina Seerbrot, a retired vineyard manager from Taliernar. Well, you'll find out more of what it's like later.

"Certainly I don't mind you calling me Alinda, Alex. Isabel, yes, I've heard of people who can dreamwalk trying to use it to help resolve psychological issues that are manifesting through dreams. Not sure if you'll have to specifically study to get work in that field, but I think it would be a great undertaking, from what little I know about you. And yes, Alex should be able to find work as a computer microtechnician or a systems programmer if he can learn enough. Even though computers have gotten somewhat easier to work with over the past forty years or so, there's still far too few people who can really learn to understand what's going on deep inside their vitals.

"As far as the two of you living together before you're formally engaged... I certainly don't care a whit as long as the two of you are happy together, and I don't think anyone else would object either. Antarians, as a culture, don't really have that sort of strict sexual morality that I've heard about from my studies of Earth culture, where it seems like whole long lists of things that two consenting and intimate partners might do together to express their feelings are considered 'wrong' - longer than the comparable list of things that are seen as good. Of course, we still do have our own sexual taboos I suppose - adultery, promiscuity, and rascallery are all frowned upon - but the two of you shouldn't need to worry about those, would you?"

"Tess appears to be doing better recently in terms of her mental outlook, although she's been having a few physical issues with the pregnancy - her son is growing very fast, and it's a drain and an unexpected stress on her body. No real worry, from what the healers tell me, but she's frustrated with being confined to bed and 'prescribed' a list of rich foods to be eating." Isabel chuckled.

"I've heard about the Breeol problem and the plan for stopping at Kaalto, of course. Presumably, you'll be approaching there when you get this message. Maybe once you've landed, we might be able to arrange an actual conversation, though with the transmission delay it might be a little bit frustrating - I think it was a twelve second round trip lag the last time I spoke with someone on Kaalto, which is a lot to get used to. Best of luck."

"Bye." Isabel waved slightly just before the video froze.

#

"Are we landed yet?" Michael asked almost before the thump-bump sound could be heard.

There was a short pause. "Yes, we're landed, but they're extending the enclosed walkway up to the airlock," Christin announced from up in the observation bubble. "The air here on Kaltonus isn't very good for anybody to be breathing, so it's better this way."

"Great," Maria added. "Well, can we go line up in the hallway leading to the lock? How long will it take?"

"Just go already," she said with a sigh. Soon enough the airlock outer door had opened, and they were heading towards the massive enclosed township outpost. All ten kids had come out of the ship, along with Christin as their unofficial guardian. At the end of the enclosed walkway, more Rahlicx security guards saluted and opened a door into a large vestibule for them.

"Hi, and welcome to Kaalto," a friendly woman, maybe forty-ish by human standards, said, crossing the room towards you. "Umm... I've read most of your names, but can't really match the faces up."

"He's Max and that's Isabel," Kyle said, pointing to them in turn. "They're the important ones, aren't they?"

"You're **all** honored guests," the woman insisted. "I'm Shanita Evres, vice-president of the township. Sorry, but the president was stuck in meetings."

"Actually, Kyle here is humble and sarcastic by nature," Christin said, putting a hand on his shoulder, "but he's the one who came up with the best idea yet of getting us past the Breeolyn blocade."

"Right. But there'll be plenty of time for that - you're not planning on leaving for several days?" Christin and Max both made sounds of agreement with that. "Well, you're certainly tired of the inside of that little courier ship - I know it's nice but it's still the same old nice cabins for weeks on end. I've arranged some of our best accomodations for you. Right this way."

"Okay," Isabel said, holding Alex's arm tight to her. Shanita led them up a flight of stairs and out onto a suspended walkway, which offered them a great view of the same concourse that she had seen in the video.

"Oh, it's even more amazing in real life," she breathed. "I almost wish that we could stay for years here."

"Well, it's always gratifying to get that response," Shanita told her with a little smile. "But with the Breeol out there, doesn't seem like a good time. Come on. We were able to arrange that suite for you and your... your friend, Miss Evans."

"Yeah - lead on!" Isabel told her.


	5. Chapter 5

"Wow," Liz said, looking around at the suite that Shanita had put her and Max into, near the Administration offices of Kaalto outpost. "I thought that our cabin on the ship was pretty good, but... wow!"

"Yeah," Max admitted. "I think that if Rahlicx people, or Antarian, have any concept of honeymoons, they probably gave us the honeymoon suite."

"Hmm... maybe," Liz admitted, stepping up to him. "That would suggest that this light blue-purple color is their romantic color, instead of pink or red or anything." Max smiled and nodded. "And of course, this doesn't count as an official honeymoon, since we haven't had the wedding yet."

"Maybe they're not sticklers about this part, or we shouldn't be," Max laughed, bending down to kiss her neck. Liz moaned in an immediately passionate response. "Anyway, I'm not saying that they're actually giving us a honeymoon, just - if you've got VIP guests, and there's no actual booking for the honeymoon suite, you give it away to the highest-profile couple among the VIPs. Don't they do that kind of thing?"

"Hmm... I don't know, my experience with the hospitality business doesn't extend to anything with suites," Liz admitted. "But it sounds like a decent theory at least. So - do we want to spend all of the time here in our great suite, or actually spend some time exploring Kaalto town before we have to leave?"

"Well, both sound good, in different way," Max admitted, holding her tight in his arms. "And I'll probably need to spend some time in map rooms talking about our plans for running the blocade - and you'll want to be there too I expect."

"Actually, yeah, I guess," Liz admitted. "Not really looking forward to it in comparison, but it's gotta be done." Reached up to brush some hair away from Max's ear. "So, whatcha wanna do first?"

"Is this a trick question?" Max laughed. Liz giggled too. "I think I want to put the honeymoon bed to some good use, and ravish you thoroughly - or is that ravage?" He kissed her and stroked her breasts through the top she was wearing.

"Hmm... tempting," Liz admitted. "But think how much better it'll be if we spend time out in public, denying ourselves our lust first before giving into it..." Max groaned. "Up to you of course, sweetie, but if you play along and bring me touristing around the concourse, I'll find some way to make it up to you, for sacrifiicing your immediate gratification."

"Oooh, you're such a naughty tease my love," Max admitted, smiling.

"And you love me like this."

"I do," he admitted. "Well, if we're going out and about, we'll need to arrange a bodyguard first."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, Christin mentioned that when we were coming in for the landing," Max said with a solemn expression on his face. "It's a friendly place overall, but they're a little worried about - well, about people who might overreact."

"Oh, boy," Liz breathed. "And what about Sanctuary? I mean, it's in the middle of this big melting-pot city, and who knows how many people there might have a grudge against one of us for some reason?"

"We're probably going to have to be careful there too," Max admitted reluctantly. "Sorry, I didn't want to worry you about that until we had to face it."

"I see," Liz said, her eyes disappointed in him for a moment. "Well, where do we go for a secret service agent or whatever?" Pause. "There isn't one waiting right outside the door, is there?"

"No, I'm pretty sure there isn't," Max told her, laughing in relief. "But I think that I saw a few ceremonial guards on duty when we came into this section. They'd probably know what the right protocol is. Do you wanna go and ask?"

"Hmm." Liz considered that. "Not quite yet. Need to get changed."

"Oh, what's wrong with that?" Max said, indicating Liz's clothes - a formal and elegant off-white gown that had been made up on board ship, and that she had decided was appropriate for their arrival in Kaalto. She'd only really brought a small bag of 'essentials' with her, although they'd made arrangements to get more luggage brought in from the ship. "Or do you want to get something skimpier to keep teasing me with while we're out in public?"

"Umm... tempting, but no, that's not the real idea. Maybe a side benefit," she told him, grabbing a red t-top and green shorts from the bag, that he'd thought she might want to wear as casual pajamas, instead of outside, though they were plenty decent. "Comfort, for changing in and out of, that's the key."

"Changing?"

"Yeah, for shopping, and trying on new clothes," Liz said, as she undid the gown. "You've got money to pay with, right?"

"Umm, I've got computerized credit," Max said, trying to make sure that there was a smile on his face.

Actually, Max had a lot of fun accompanying Liz on her shopping trip, and even got into the spirit of things, trying a few promising outfits on and even buying the ones that Liz recommended. For one thing, Liz was having so much fun exploring the concourse that it was easy for Max to catch the mood from her. They didn't spend that much time on clothes either, not more than half the trip or so at any rate. _Everything_ was fair game for her, from the alien food courts - which none of them had really had the nerve to try from the food dispenser recipies on board ship, but Max found this stuff nice and very spicy - to keepsakes and souvenirs, live entertainment, a kind of town meeting debating the merits of raising taxes to pay for increased preventative maintenance to the life support systems, and more.

After all of that, they were sitting side by side on a kind of bench and resting up for either more or heading back to their suite, a little Rahlicx boy, looking maybe seven or eight, ran up to the two of them and blurted out, "So why are the two of you so funny-looking"

Both the bodyguard and the boy's mother looked horrified at the question, but Max just smiled slightly, having expected someone to comment on this before now, and being pretty prepared for it. "Hey, I'm Max, and this is my fiancee Liz. What's your name?"

"I'm Garrasth, and this is my Mom. What's a fiance, and who's the big tough guy? You haven't even answered my first question yet."

"Well, it was a pretty personal question, and we hadn't been introduced yet, but now we are," Liz put in. "Fiancee is a word for people who are planning to get married soon. This is Vrantar, and he's just here to make sure that we're okay, because we're new to Kaalto."

"Alright," Garrasth said, tapping a few fingers against his side in impatience for the good stuff.

"As far as how we look, well, mostly that's because of where we come from," Max said evenly. "That's a planet called Earth, it's a great place and I miss it, even if not many of the people there know that there are people who live on any other planets." He waited to see if he was going to get 'They must be really dumb if they don't know that,' but it didn't come.

"Hmm." He seemed to take a while to sort this out. Eventually he needed help. "Mom, you and Dad and I and most of the kids in my class at school, we were born here, but we're Rahlicx, and way back when our grandparents or great-great-granparents came from a place called Rahlicx, which is off close to - close to Ann-tarr."

"Yeah, that's right sweetie," she agreed.

"And there are a few Klenthorrs around - Dad works with one, he's had him over for dinner, and there are a few small Klenthorrs in my class. Their great-grandparents came from a planet called Klenthorr, that's a long way away, and not close to much of anything."

"Yeah," the mother and Max said at the same time.

"Klenthorrs are funny looking too, especially if you're not used to them," Garrasth continued, getting on a roll now. "So what are you two, then - Earths?"

"No, I don't think so," Liz agreed. "Earthlings maybe, or humans."

"And - did anybody really come from here on Kaltonin?" he asked his mother. "Like, without having their great-great-great granparents or wherever come from somewhere else?"

"Not really, not like people sweetie," she said with a smile. "Around six hundred years ago, there wasn't anybody here, just a few plants growing, and small animals, like the ones you saw on your class trip outside of the dome."

"Okay. Well, bye now." And mother and son left them pretty abruptly.

"Hmm... I was wondering if I should have mentioned that I was only half Earthling, but probably it was better not to get into that," Max said.

"Yeah, I'll agree with that," Liz told him. "So, what do you want to do next?"

"I think that I've had enough of the concourse," Max said. "Head back to the suites and maybe have a pizza dinner with some of our friends? If they've got the food slot settings copied over yet."

"Hmm... yeah, I guess." Liz looked forlornly around the concourse as if wishing that there was something else that she could make a good case for. As they got up she asked the bodyguard, "Vrantar, do you have any suggestions for something that would be fun to do while we're here?"

"Me?" Vrantar seemed to be surprised to be asked this, which Max could understand - he was a secuity officer, not a tourism official. But then, even security guards were just ordinary people after they went home, and probably had a lot of steam to blow off. Maybe that was what Liz had in mind with asking him. "Well, I'm not too sure what you happen to consider fun. There's the Prianus, which is sort of in the way of being an Earth-themed nightclub, though. You might enjoy taking a look, at least."

"Earth-themed?" Liz breathed, obviously struck by the contrast. "Like, trying to be an authentic Earth nightclub, or just throwing in all sorts of earth novelties all over the place, or what?"

"Only been there once, and I don't know what a real Earth nightclub is like, but probably a bit of both," he admitted.

"Well, no matter what, we've **got** to give it a try," she insisted. "Maybe bring the whole group, or anyone who wants to come."

"Hmm... okay, right," Max agreed. "But we have to remember to be _very_ careful to only drink stuff that's safe to human or part-human metabolisms, respectively."

"Oh?" Liz paused, and then picked up on the meaning - the last time a whole bunch of them had been going out to the same nightspot, it had been in Corpus Christi, on their end-of-summer blowout trip, and Ava had managed to drink something that was poisonous to her and given them all quite a scare before recovering.

"Think we'll be able to be of some help with that," Vrantar mentioned in an undertone. "Par for the course, being on VIP escort duty on a remote outpose like this. I've already done some cramming on the do-not-eats list for you and your friends."

"Yeah, I wondered about that when you warned us away from trying the chuva rolls back at the second food stand we came to," Liz said. Vrantar nodded solemnly. "Well, thanks. What was it? We may need to watch out for it some other time when you're not around."

"Bitter liiavrel root, chopped up inside the roll," he told them. "In combining with one of the human intestinal fluids, it's been known to react in a way that produces hydrogen cyanide."

"Oooh." Max shuddered with the thought. Cyanides were very quick poisons, he remembered. To think that something like that could happen too swiftly for him to even use his poisons, to save either himself or the woman that he loved...

"All part of the service, sir," Vrantar insisted. "Don't worry about it."

"Well, umm, thanks."

"Is there any way we can at least take the scenic route back to our suites?" Liz suddenly suggested.

"What do you mean?" Vrantar answered after a moment. "What scenery there is is out there." He waved back to the far wall of the concourse, which was glass, and looked out on the forbidding outside weather and the landing field where their ship still was.

Max caught Liz's look. "I think she was saying that she wanted to see more of the inside of town," he interpreted.

"Hmm..." This apparently took their bodyguard a little while to figure out - probably he was used to thinking of travel routes in terms of efficiency, shortest routes, minimum exposure to danger, and figuring out a way to partially reverse this was tricky. (Only partially, because if he really wanted to make the trip as long as possible, they could probably wander through the outpost's corridors for a week at least, and they had to leave before that.) "Okay, we can go through a few extra sections I guess. Come on." And he altered the direction they'd been taking across the concourse floor slightly.

So after leaving the concourse, they went through office sections, and residential districts, past a manufacturing plant but not too closed, a community dining hall, a video communications station, and through a primary education facility. That reminded Max of something else that he'd been thinking of after Garrasth had finished accosting him. "Have you - have you thought about what it'd be like raising our kids on a... a different planet than Earth, you know? I mean - you were great with that little kid, and I know you told me that you wanted to have kids..."

"Missing that little word, bud," Liz teased him. "Or two. I want to have kids _with you_. That's the real draw. I mean kids in general, yeah, great and everything, but thinking of how much they're going to have in common with you - those are going to be some incredible little people. I... I never had a chance to get to know you when you were younger than sixteen - heck, you weren't even really anybody to get to know when you were four, or... you know what I mean. Before you got out of the pod."

"I guess not," he admitted. "I feel the same thing, about how great our children will be and how much I want to get to know them... but in my case, it'll have more to do with their amazing mother." Liz giggled, and waited for him to kiss her.

"On the other hand, the idea of going through this without - without my parents, or Maria's mom, or any of the other people back home who we didn't manage to drag along with us, yeah, that's a bit scary." Liz took a breath that was suddenly uneven. "I mean, your parents - I can almost picture the look on their face just before they get a really good look at their first grandchild... err, well, you know what I mean. I don't want that imagination to be all that I get..."

Max reached out to hold Liz's hand, and suddenly, instead of that touch being the reassurance to her that he had hoped for, he felt Liz's sorrow and frustration flooding through their contact link, nearly overwhelming him too, to the point that he felt tears welling up in his eyes - or were they Liz's eyes too? They had gotten aboard the ship with Christin because it had been the only way to stay safe, to keep their parents and other loved ones safe from alien danger and happy at home, but the pain of sheer distance from all that was 'way back home' was suddenly hard to bear.

As the grief of leaving the Crashdown behind, and a few of the kids at West Roswell high who were usually nice to him, and the familiarity of the desert scenery, was still consuming Max, Liz managed to get her composure back first. "Umm, excuse us Vrantar." Max couldn't see the bodyguard, but imagined that he was perfectly impassive, trained to ignore personal moments that unfolded right before him like this one. Still, knowing that there was another person waiting for him to resume the trip helped Max get back to normal himself. (What's so great about normal? Heh. The old joke didn't really apply in moments like this.)

The fact that his hand was still holding Liz's helped him recover, too - not from an overflow of her own calm, (he suspected that she didn't have any to share with him.) but the simple reassurance of touching a loved one that he'd hoped to offer her in the first place. "Okay, umm... maybe we should cut the scenic route short and head back as soon as possible now."

"Oh, right, now you tell me," Vrantar said with a subtly alien laugh. "We're probably at least as far from home base as we were at the concourse."

"Of course," Liz agreed with a smile. "Well, that wasn't too long a trip in the first place."

"We could probably take the rapid, if the two of you are eager to get back," he said a little doubtfully.

"As in a rapid transit system?" Liz said, instantly captivated by the idea. "I didn't realize there was a need - Kaalto seems so small and centralized already."

"Well, it is, and it isn't," the guard agreed "It's a fair walk between the farthest points in 'town', and sometimes people are in too much of a hurry. The rapid helps ease off traffic congestion in the corridors. Also, it connects to a few other installations, up to two miles away."

"Is there any security risk with using on it?" Max asked. "I mean, for us, being around a lot of other people."

"Not more so than being on the concourse I suppose," he admitted. "Well, head on." And he took them down a side corridor out of the 'schoolyard.'

The 'rapid terminal' looked so much like a Manhattan subway station that Max could hardly believe it. He'd only been in one twice, before the Summit when Rath and Lonnie had been hosting Tess and him. (At least, only twice in an operative station during the house when they were busy - they'd also gone through some older disused platforms when going to and from the Dupes' 'lair'.) The Kaalto equivalent was a bit cleaner, but not surprisingly so, which was a definite contrast to the rest of the outpost that Max had noticed. Also, since the entire town was underground, there hadn't been any need to go 'down' to reach the terminal. He did wonder what provisions there were for footpaths that had to cross the rapid lines - probably they simply had to detour one floor down or up.

And the vehicle itself that travelled up and down the line was much narrower and less sturdy than a subway car - seats on the left, either facing right or 'forwards', standing room on the right, with doors on the right side of the 'car' about every four yards or so. They actually weren't travelling on it for very long. Max tried to offer Liz an available seat, but she seemed to think that standing would let her see more. Acceleration and Deceleration was completely smooth, undetectable and inertialess for those inside the rapid - probably a refinement of the same thing that made spaceship drives and artificial gravity possible, whatever that was.

After leaving the rapid station, and taking a sort of one-person-at-a-time elevator up five floors, (it had a spot for one person coming by every ten seconds or so, which meant that they weren't seperated for long,) they were back at the block of official suites, and said goodbye to Vrantar for the day. Isabel and Alex had a privacy lock up on their door, (which Max didn't really want to think about,) but Michael and Maria's suite was open, and inside were not only the two of them, but Kyle, Lonnie, and an unfamiliar boy who might have been around their age.

Liz didn't seem to pay the stranger any attention at first. "Looks like the party got started without us - no pizza yet."

"Pizza!" the new guy explained. "You've got decent pizza recipes for a food dispenser? We've got to try them!"

"Who's your friend?" Max asked. Pizza might not have been in evidence, but a lot of other earth 'fast junk food' had obviously been produced recently, and most of it consumed. Michael offered him a plastic cup crammed almost full of french fries, and Max took it and absently munched. They were still pretty hot.

"Neil Tradzac asked if he could come up here and meet the genuine earthpeople," Maria laughed. "One of the town councillors and the internal safety deputy brought him up and introduced him."

Oh. Max gave Neil a look. In a lot of ways, he seemed just about like any kid from anywhere, having the time of his life with some new friends - definitely not a shy wallflower type. "You're what - half human, half Antarian, Neil?"

"Hmm?" He seemed surprised by the guess as Max and Liz sat down. "Give or take a few percent. My dad was a quarter-earthling too, or maybe one eighth - he's not really sure. My parents came here from Antar a year before I was born, because there was work for them in the greenhouse caves."

"Well, it's really nice to meet you," Liz said, offering him a hand to shake. "Liz Parker, and I'm all human, unless you count my soul essence or something like that."

"Huh."

"I'll go punch in the pizza order," Kyle offered. "You guys must be tired after being out on the town so much."

"Sure, thanks bud," Liz told him. "Are Ava and Rath still sightseeing as well?"

""I think so, yeah," Lonnie said. "Their door was saying that nobody's home when I went over to invite them for this. Might have gone for dinner out at a small Rahlicx bistro or something like that."

"Hope that they've got someone along who knows better than to let them try chuva rolls."

"Oh, yeah," Neil chimed in. "I guess you guys don't know all about the local cooking that you've got to steer clear of if you've got any human DNA."

"I was planning just to steer clear of all local cooking, for now," Maria put in. "Is there lots of it that's dangerous?"

"Hmm... not lots, no," he admitted. "Just a bit hard to keep track of it all sometimes. Oooh, wow." Neil reacted with appropriate awe and excitement when Kyle laid an extra-large deep-dish with pepperoni, diced bacon, and cayenne peppers onto the table between them all, on a shiny black platter. "It smells just great."

"Savor it," Liz suggested. "You should always remember the first bite of pizza you ever had."

Neil followed her advice, and the smile on his face and the sigh of appreciation were all that any of them could have expected. "So, your mom is fully - um, earthling, Neil?"

"Yep. Both of **her** parents were abductees, from different batches. Grandad got taken by Breoll slavers when he was nineteen, and Grammum was only four when some ship full of wandering explorers snatched her whole family."

"And they both ended up on Antar?" Lonnie asked, sounding a bit interested despite herself.

"Yeah - Granddad was bought by a minor merchant, eventually freed and offered work in his former owner's business, and Grammum - well, it had become tradition to take Earth abductees to Antar after you didn't have anything more to learn from them. That practice had started before the regime change, and nobody realized for a while how different things were under Kivar. It wasn't too good for her family - for any Earthlings who didn't have protection and employment really..." he trailed off.

"Wait a second," Kyle asked. "So if things changed when Kivar took over - did that mean that the kings of the previous royal houses - Zan and his father before him - they made a point out of accepting Earth refugees?"

"Well, sortof, I guess, yeah." Neil said. "We didn't go into that in any great detail in history class, but I think it was Sanren Liaret's plan. There were getting to be a lot of human abductees around, and nobody really wanted them in their own backyard. Sanren established programs of education and other support for them - Zan continued on with what his father had done, I think. And Antarian resentment of that 'special treatment' for indigent humans was one of the factors explaining how Kivar was able to establish his power base for the revolt."

"Wow, I never guessed that... that they were involved in something like that," Max admitted. "And..." He thought about asking how much of the good of this program Kivar had managed to undo, but thought better of bringing it up. He could check in the library computers and probably get a better notion than explanations from Neil could provide.

"So, have you guys done anything other than feed Neil's curiosity about earth food?" Liz asked with a sunny smile. "Our bodyguard was telling us about an 'earth-themed' nightclub... have you been? Oh, I can't remember the name of it now."

"Prianus?" Neil filled in. "No, my parents won't let me go, even though I can now that I'm eighteen. They think it's some den of ill virtue."

"Hmm." Liz said, getting that thoughtful look on her face that Max had learned to respect and in some cases fear. "Well, we'll see about that, but not tonight. There'll be other times, and Max and I are tired and weren't planning on going out again. How about watching something?" She pointed to a video screen on the wall. "Can you show us anything good?"

"Hmm." Neil considered. "You've probably never seen any of 'The wanderer,' huh?"

"No, don't think so," Michael agreed. "It's good?"

"Probably the best adventure serial to come out in the last fifteen years at least," Neil enthused, picking up a computer control pad and working on it. "It's about a human, and abductee teenager actually, although they don't really get much right about humans, and I think that they just did that to make him seem strange and unusual to their majority viewers. Who gets sucked into a struggle between good and evil treasure hunters out in an unexplored cluster of ancient stars."

"Hmm... okay, yeah, I think I can get into that," Michael said, and Maria nodded.

"Hmm." Neil considered a moment. "Okay, this doesn't have the first year's worth, which might be a bit confusing, but on the other hand, this is about where the show really hit its stride for the first time, so I'll do my best to explain if there's anything that's confusing you." And the show started playing, a bit of a low-grade hologram that wasn't entirely lifelike, but still showed some faintly shifting perspectives as you moved your head, so that it seemed a bit 'realer' than regular television. The teaser showed a young woman in some sort of escape pod, in a chamber filled with fluid of some sort actually, getting picked up by a tractor beam and deposited in the empty cargo bay of a spaceship. She emerged, gasping and trying to tear herself free of the fluid, looking around her in confusion, her simple white clothes totally soaked through. Liz groaned slightly at that.

"Just wait," Neil promised, and Max wasn't sure just what he meant by that, but he kept watching, not for the girl - not when he had Liz, but to see what the story would be like.

#

Alex woke up with his face buried in softly scented blonde hair, which wasn't terribly unusual these days. It took him a moment to remember that they weren't in their cabin aboard the ship, but in their suite atop the underground cave of Kaalto town. The previous night came back to him in waves of memory, how they had stayed up for a few hours, exploring the amenities of the rooms and talking, then had both gone to sleep, exhasted from recent events and from staying up too long on the ship waiting for the landing - Alex had set the privacy signal on the door to make sure that nothing had woken them up until they were slept out. Apparently that was now for him, whenever now was. (And it would probably be more trouble than it was worth to even come up with a meaningful time framework to answer that question in just for the moment.

He lay with one arm around Izzie's soft and warm body, drifting through still-drowsy thoughts. Had he had a dream during the night? (Well, probably, but was there one that he could remember anything about?) For a moment he wondered if Izzie might have gone into his dreams even though they were right next to each other, but that didn't seem likely. Dreamwalking wasn't terribly restful for her, and she'd mentioned that it probably wasn't as good as undisturbed sleep for the people whose dreams she entered as well. But there was some memory that was nagging at him from the depths of slumber - something about... about going to university?

Well, that made some sense as a product of his own subconscious, after all. College applications had been something that had been very much on his mind, back in Roswell, before other events had overridden such normality, and no matter what kind of education he might be able to get on Sanctuary, it probably wouldn't be that much like the University at Las Cruces or anything like that. (Why had he thought of that one first, of the place that Tess had taken him in secret? Maybe just because it was the only university he'd ever spent much time at.) It would have been nice to go away to school with Isabel, perhaps, to hang around in dorm rooms and talk to each other about the classes that they were taking, meeting friends in the student union or whatever...

Just at that point, Isabel stirred herself, and her head shifted, brushing hair past Alex's nose and his cheeks, though she didn't try to turn around and face him yet or anything like that. "Well, morning honey," she mumbled, sounding still a bit sleepy but fairly alert considering how still she'd been just a few seconds before. "Is that a rocket in your pajamas or are you just happy to see me this morning?"

Alex laughed just a little bit. It was true that he was stiffly erect, as much because of the usual biological reasons about morning, blood flow while the body was horizontal, and bladder buildup as because of the sensations of Isabel's scantily clad body nestled up against the spot where he was, but he wasn't sure how much he liked her joking about it like this. "I think that you know just what it is." And he shifted uncomfortably, which had the unplanned effect of bumping his 'rocket' up against her butt. (Or at least, not consciously orchestrated.)

"Hmm... well, then, why don't we see about putting it to use?" she breathed, so softly that it took Alex a moment to clue in to what she'd said. "I'm horny too, babe, want it so bad that I might turn green from it all, and I don't see any reason to wait any more. You up for it? I mean - I know that you're 'up', but are you ready to..."

"Hmm..." Alex couldn't put his thoughts into any more words than that for just a moment, and then had to chuckle. "Is this what you didn't want to tell me until the moment came?"

"Umm... yeah, actually. It's a girl thing."

"Yeah, I actually kind of figured that out," Alex admitted, and let his hand drift down to the front of Isabel's t-shirt, fondling her chest through the fabric in a way that they'd already established she liked a lot. "Everything has to be just so for a first time, and talking about if beforehand ruins the magic. Something like that, right?"

"Pretty much, yeah." Now Isabel turned to face him, and kiss him, and passed her own hands over his 'rocket' as Alex stroked her lovely hair. "But we're here now, and we've got quite enough magic this morning - or in the middle of this night, or whatever time of day it actually is." Alex chuckled about that phrasing, and poked gently in the small of her back, looking for another magic spot. "Love me now, Alex. Let me love you back."

"Now and forever," he promised to her earnestly, and started to show his love with his lips, first nervously, and then with growing confidence at her reaction, loving her ears and her supple neck. Isabel purred in delight and crawled onto him, pulling his torso up so that he had a lap for her to sit in, and started to run her hands over his bare chest, (he'd been sleeping without a shirt on,) and paying extra-special attention to his nipples.

The foreplay proceeded quickly from there, with both of them being eager for more, and Isabel using her powers to strip any inconvenient clothing from both of them instead of removing it in more conventional ways. Alex clutched her voluptuous body to him, dragging his tongue through her deep cleavage and up to the top of her fleshy peaks. "Did... did you arrange something for protection," he managed to ask her, in between pants of lust. "I... I don't have a condom with me, I think."

"Didn't plan ahead that much?" she asked, swinging her head just a little so that extra hair fell around the top of his own scalp like a blonde curtain.

"Hey, this was your show, I just had my suspicions," he joked. "And anyway, the two rubbers I brought with me from Earth are getting a bit old, and I wasn't sure that they were worth counting on." Something else managed to occur to Alex through the passion, and he started to nuzzle her shoulder in order to get a bit closer to whispering in her ear. "That - that's assuming that you want to take precautions at this point. I... I don't have a huge problem with trying, or leaving things up to fate, though I'm not entirely sure I'm ready for _that_ notion. And taking care of a baby might disrupt the plans for studying that we both have, when we get to Sanctuary."

"No, umm, no, I don't think I'm at the point where I want to get pregnant, even with - with you," Isabel grunted back. "Though it's kind of sweet that you asked me for my opinion. On the other hand... " She shifted further down, which brought her shoulder and in fact even her head out of reach of Alex's mouth, but let her fondle his ass and his organ in interesting, but not immediately maddening, ways. "You're a silly, smart boy Alex. Did you figure that Earth was the only source for birth control? We're all in a lot of trouble if that's the case."

"Ohh." The obvious answer hit Alex. "I could've asked the computer on the ship. It fabricated enough other stuff for us, from clothes to tooth cleaners and so on, it's not too much of a stretch to think it could've handled condoms."

"Or a diaphragm," Isabel admitted. "Which I did ask it for, but I haven't got it in yet. Just a minute - it's in my bag."

But Alex moved with her, or nearly so, when she went to fetch the item, hardly bearing to let his beloved get even that far away. Something that Liz and Maria had both mentioned, (though only very circumspectly,) seemed to be hitting them, a kind of urge and need for their coupling that went beyond anything that Alex had ever expected, something that seemed to resonate between himself and Isabel every time they touched, and there was hardly a moment when they **weren't** touching. His desire was being transmitted to her, added to her own, and then sent back to him, leading to a compulsion that seemed to go beyond the strictly human, and was also testing the limits of what he could stand to resist, even temporarily. There seemed no doubt in his mind that even if there were no birth control available and neither of them really **wanted** to proceed without it, in this state they would still end up having sex. It was worse than that one time he got drunk...

"Come on, I said I was ready for you, lover boy," Isabel giggled, and he realized that he'd managed to tune her out and drift off into her own thoughts despite the sensation that she was the center that his universe turned around. One **good** thing about the alien lust bunnies was that it was actually strong enough to drown out any performance anxiety that Alex might have felt at this point. He was fairly familiar with Isabel's body at this point, and of his own, and the right way of bringing them together was completely obvious now in every detail. And the feedback loop was stronger than ever, now feeding around not just desire, but the physical satisfaction of what they were doing, and the love that was behind it, until...

"Huh, okay, I didn't expect that," Isabel said, as they seemed to emerge into a yellow-lit space that had nothing particular in common with their suite... especially furniture. (As in that this new place didn't have furniture while the bedroom did, not that it had furniture that was completely different.) "Don't tell me that the sex was too hot and we're both dead - or dying - of heart attacks?"

"I think that 'the light' you see when you die is supposed to be white or blue-white," Alex pointed out sensibly. "This must be something different - a weird kind of dreamspace?"

"Hmm." Isabel's consideration of that thought was clinical. "It's not a dream, no, though there does seem to be something in common. For one thing, these aren't our real bodies, just some kind of representation of our energy or essence I think."

"Your essence is lovely," Alex kidded her, and got a bit of an elbow nudge in the ribs for his trouble. Isabel looked down at her apparent nakedness, seemed to think that there was something wrong with it, and comfortable robes appeared around both of them. "What, just because we're not making love anymore, we can't be nude?"

"If we were after-glowing pleasantly back at the suite, we could definitely be bare as we dare," Isabel shot back. "This is an unfamiliar situation, and I don't think that nudity and unfamiliar situations go particularly well together. We don't know if we might meet someone, or..."

It wasn't immediately clear if her putting the thought into words had anything to do with the reality, but suddenly somebody was indeed arriving in their vicinity. "Hi, Alex, it's nice to see you. Hello there... Isabel."

"_Dad_?" Alex exclaimed, completely stunned and flabbergasted by this now. "What - what are you doing here, and now of all times? Are you really here?"

"I... I'm not sure that it's really me," John Whitman admitted, sitting down on nothing at all with a thoughtful expression that did seem entirely like him. "In any event, sorry about the odd timing, but - I'm glad that the two of you are still, um, getting along so well, and I do expect that we'll at least get to throw a wedding reception at some point."

"Umm - if we ever get back to Earth, then fine," Isabel told him. "Is there anything else you need to tell us?"

"Do you have better things to do?" John asked, and then suddenly he had vanished, along with the yellow light. Instead, there was a huge holographic and slightly see-through display hanging in nowhere in front of them. An Antarian newscaster's face was in the 'foreground', the face seeming at least twelve feet high in perspective.

"...reactions coming in from all over the sector as Kivar Andraikus, self-styled King of Antar, central co-ordinator of the five worlds, and overlord of the Zentauris suns, accepts exile to Franga Zentauris B in exchange for immunity to any possible prosecution for a long list of alleged entities' rights violations spanning most of his career. The new agreement would put the planet Antar under the control of a newly formed republican congress, and many from the dregs of the gutter to the highest halls, in worlds within travelling distance of Antar, are expressing their relief that Andraikus' so-called 'reign of terror' has come to an end."

"He - he's been deposed at last?" Isabel breathed. "Or - or is this a vision of the future, a wish out of our own minds?"

"Not sure," Alex said, squeezing her hand. "I wonder how it happened, or might happen, or you know..."

"Ssh, I think she's saying something relevant," Isabel told him.

"...on the eve of hostilities with coalition 'invaders' due to land on Antar, Andraikus was apparently caught unawares by events at home. First a popular uprising against him, and then some sort of more understated palace coup, seem to have left Andraikus with insufficient political leverage to conduct the war with appreciable chances of success, which prompted a parley transmission from the man who famously claimed at the Preintor talks that 'I will never lose the upper hand.'"

"Wow," Alex said. "I wonder who - will invade."

"I... I don't know," Isabel admitted, as the broadcast and the darkness faded away around them, leaving them back in bed. "Wow, that was weird."

"Hmm... yeah," Alex admitted, getting a bit of an odd look on his face. "I wonder if we'll remember that."

"Dunno," Isabel admitted, snuggling up against him. Soon they had both drifted off into snoozes.


	6. Chapter 6

"Hmm." The Rahlicx peered at the holographic tank display one more time, as if wanting to reassure himself that the facts hadn't changed before making his report. "No, the Breoll blockade ships are not moving position. I think that they might think that stopping here might have been a ploy to draw them out and in."

"They'd have to move eventually, if we just stayed put," Michael put in. "I mean, if they actually wanted to get us. Do you think that they **would** try to come in and take us out by force?"

"I'm not sure," the guard captain said with a predatory expression. "Kaalto may be little but we're fierce. They wouldn't want to invade us if they really expected us to resist, and the mood here is pretty resistant." Isabel flinched slightly when the word 'invasion' was mentioned, as if it reminded her of something that she couldn't quite remember. "On the other hand, they might try to move in just enough to put us under siege. There are trade lines that we're reasonably dependent on, and we wouldn't fare as well trying to break the siege out in open space."

"Will they try that within the next day or two?" Lonnie asked. "In your opinion. I mean, nobody can predict the future perfectly, but..."

"No, not until they're pretty sure that it's not just a ploy, which could take four or five," he said. "Our actual plan will probably surprise them - at least, I hope so."

"Alright," Max said. "Is there anything else of importance to report?"

"No, sir. Sanctuary and the homeworld have ceased communications, because the Breoll are close enough that they might be able to overhear any signals. Inside, things are quiet - there is no sign of any adverse reaction to your arrival."

"Well, thanks," Liz told him. "I guess we'll leave you to your duty."

"Thank you, sir." The officer gave an odd alien salute, but nobody tried to send it back to him, and he didn't really expect one. The group of Roswellian expatriates filed out of the orbital and system defense office and gathered in a rough circle.

"Okay," Alex said. "What do we want to do now?"

"Hmm." Ava looked back and forth, but nobody seemed to have an idea immediately. They were in a mid-sized corridor in among the government and armed services offices, and it wasn't really a place that anybody wanted to stay, so without anybody leading the way, they all started to drift off towards the doors by which they'd entered that section. Quickly the circle broke apart and reformed as three lines, of three, three, and four people.

"I actually want to go and see this concourse, since I haven't already been," Maria pointed out. "Max, Liz, would it be a terrible bore for you guys to go again?"

"No," Liz said, just at the same moment as Max put in a "Kind of," and they both laughed after realizing that they'd contradicted each other. "Umm, you can go with Maria and M... and anyone else who wants to go," Max told her. "Or, I'll come along too, if you really want. Didn't figure that we had to be inseperable though."

"Don't come with unless you really want to," she told him with a big smile, and a kiss. "Is it going to be just a girls' thing? Michael, there's really some fun stuff that I think that you'd like."

"How about... I'll go, but not stay with the girls," Michael suggested. "Along with any other guys who want to tag along. I have this sneaking suspicion that we'll be interested in different things."

And that was the plan that was settled on - all five girls went, (including Ava, who had also seen the shopping district the day before, but didn't mind going again. Max and Rath were the only holdouts from the guy's group.

"Okay, so do you want to do something for male bonding, or just let me wander on my own?" Rath growled at him.

"Umm - wander away," Max said, and then started to reconsider tagging along with Alex, Michael, and Kyle.

He ended up going back out to the ship by himself instead. The door responded to his handprint, which was nice, and nobody but the engineer was inside, and he seemed to be in the middle of some involved procedure with the engines, didn't need any help, and didn't want to talk or anything.

And he didn't want to sit in his and Liz's room without Liz - he'd be spending enough time there, and headed back into the outpost.

And tried to find the other guys on the concourse, which took about an hour and a half.

#

"Come on, Michael, this is important," Maria insisted, glaring at her reflection in the mirror.

"Okay, fine." Michael looked up from the little handheld computer hookup and considered her. "You look really hot. Absolutely does _not_ make your butt look too big or anything."

That was obviously not the right things to say, because the glare was suddenly transferred from the mirror to Michael himself. "I didn't even _ask_ about my butt."

Michael squirmed slightly under her fierce regard. "But - but you would have, right?"

"Maybe, but not..." She was about to huff into a huge temper tantrum, and then managed to deflater herself slightly with difficulty. "So you weren't just trying to reassure me because you _did_ think..."

"No, really I wasn't," he insisted, getting up and putting his arms around her. "Just - well, sorry, it was the wrong thing to say at that moment, and I'm sorry. Okay?"

"As long as I know it was coming from a good place," she admitted. "Sorry... I guess all of this homesickness stuff is making me pretty irritable." Michael managed to avoid commenting on that one. "Well, what about you, what are you going to wear to the club?" She considered herself in the mirror once again. "Oooh, I still need to accessorize."

"Oh, right." Actually, Michael had to admit that she'd probably fit in better at the club if she didn't show up exactly like she was right now - especially the barefoot part, but experience had taught him that 'accessorizing' was something that he didn't want to get **too** close to when Maria was doing it. Fortunately, that might distract her from his own plans to just show up in a white wifebeater and his black jeans. He sat back down and made approving noises whenever she asked a question that it seemed safe to agree to, all the while thinking that 'really hot' was probably an understatement. She had settled on a dark blue skirt, probably a 'miniskirt' by the book definitions, (the ones that hadn't been updated since the miniskirt heyday of the sixties at least,) but wasn't particularly short or tight. In fact it was definitely on the loose side, sort of flowy, and had a tendency to rise a little bit depending on the air currents, which was definitely sexy. Paired with this was a long-sleeved red top, sort of tight with a v-neck. The overall effect was scorching.

Her hair was a bit disappointing, though he wouldn't have said that to her in those words. He'd never been a big fan of the french twist updo, and even though this particular version of the style had something to recommend it, he would still have had to take off points for it - if he was actually assigning points, that was. Wondering if he was nuts for daring so much, he got up to stand next to her again as she was checking her two-inch hoop earrings, and breathed. "Let me try something, okay?"

"Umm, sure - but we're supposed to meet them in five minutes, so nothing that I'd have to dress again for, and... wait a second, either you're not dressed yet, or - you're just wearing that?" There was a second's pause as Maria considered. "It's not horrible I guess, but..."

"No, no undressing you - yet," Michael said, choosing his moment to distract her. With a wave, her hair was freed from the french twist and fell straight back behind her. The effect was simple and yet dramatic, Michael thought, with the mid-brown hair, (close to Maria's natural shade he thought, though it was still a bit hard to tell,) sparkling just a little even in the plain light of the bedroom. "What do you think?"

"Hmm... the twist was that bad?" she asked, considering her straightened hair critically.

"Umm... I can put it back like that if you want," he volunteered after a moment. "And put on something nicer for you."

"No, that's alright, on both counts." She rose up onto tiptoes in her black boots to kiss him. "The hair's pretty, a nice change at least, though I hope that Liz didn't go for the same things, since it's pretty close to her usual 'do. And those clothes are fine, you look very handsome and just a bit dangerous." Another kiss. "There's something a bit familiar about the ensemble, though I can't quite put my finger on it. Like I saw it on tv somewhere."

"Probably not too important," Michael said. "Let's go."

#

Their arrival at Prianus caused quite a stir. Firstly, the fact that all of them looked completely human, even the hybrids, had some of the regulars talking about whether it was a good makeup job or a batch of new quarterbreed/purebred earthling immigrants, or what. (Very few of them had heard about the real reasons for their ship's landing at Kaalto.) And then, there were the relatively 'authentic' earth clubbing clothes, especially on the girls, some of whom would have been nervous about wearing such outfits into a real nightclub back on Earth. But here, they were guaranteed to be safe, nobody else really knew where the bounds of propriety and convention fell back on the mother planet at this point in time, and it seemed unlikely that anyone in the more liberal Rahlicx society would condemn them for wearing suggestive clothing. The guys also attracted some attention in their 'impressively realistic' duds, and the ones who were partnered generally didn't mind their ladies showing off in a situation like this, confident that nobody would be going off with a stranger - well, except maybe Lonnie, but she was free to do so if she wanted, and more than competent to take care of herself in any situation that didn't require the intervention of an available bodyguard.

Liz and Max went up to the bar first thing, and tried the 'diet pepsee', which tasted more like a mix between a coke, a root beer, and grape juice - but Liz liked it a lot, and Max ended up switching to cold water. "So, are you going to want to dance with me?" he asked in her ear, as the sound system blasted unrecognizable pop-technoish music at them.

"What... do I even have to ask?" Liz said back. "Would have thought that you wouldn't be able to wait to get me out onto the floor - especially in this little number." Liz had managed to contrive a kind of a light gray bodysuit, which stretched and clung to her legs, her hips, and her torso, fitting closely around her ankles, wrists, and neck. Max couldn't deny to himself that the prospect of Liz moving up against him, wearing that, was sorely tempting. "I thought so," she replied to the look on his face. "So the only question is - do we start with a fast number - or a slow dance?"

Isabel and Alex were already out on the floor, and starting to get naughty in public. Ava, Rath, Maria, and a few strangers actually cheeres as the two of them danced very close, fondling each other's bottoms, fronts, and Alex stroking Isabel's smooth thighs below the hem of her short black leather dress. (Well, not real leather, it was an alien facsimile that looked and felt just like real leather, which was more practical and less cruel.) Max just turned away, trying to pretend as if he didn't notice any of the commotion, and Liz giggled, knowing that he was having difficulty with his darling sister making a spectacle of herself this way, but didn't really feel like he could pitch a fit any more - after all, he and Liz may not have acted like that in public, but that was about the only thing that she and Alex were doing that he hadn't...

The whole group had a great time - meeting up with Neil, who had indeed been allowed to come so that he could meet his 'special friends' just passing through, and a few people that Neil knew from classes and work details. Kyle flirted outrageously with one of these acquaintances, a pretty hybrid girl with bright silvery hair called Lyzed, and she ended up flirting back, and taking him out on a tour of the dance floor. Lonnie was more reserved about things, (despite the semi-transparent black negligee outfit she had worn,) but eventually got talked into having a friendly drink by a tall, dark, and kinduv handsome alien man.

Most of the partnered girls got offers for 'cutting in', and a few of the guys, but few of them took strange suitors up on the offer. The second time it happened to Liz, she got an odd flash from the green-skinned man making the offer, a sensation of rampant lust that was both cheerfully cruel and that he didn't seem to be trying to disguise. She had to fight off a case of the creeps even after he had quite willingly gone away and left them alone.

"You know, I didn't even pay much attention to the decor," Kyle commented as he, Lonnie, Max, Liz, Michael, and Maria headed back towards their suites. (Alex, Isabel, Ava, and Rath had wanted to stay, but promised that they wouldn't be up too long.)

"Yeah, it wasn't as outrageous as anything I was expecting from the Crashdown," Liz admitted. "Mostly like a real American nightclub - like that one that we went to back in Dallas, remember?" She paused, working out that Max was the only one who had both been with her there and was present now. Everybody else had been stocking up on food supplies and other necessities during the Dallas stopover of their road trip, while Max, Liz, Isabel, Alex, and Ava had gone to check out a mysterious sensation about the club, which had turned out to hold the first clue towards finding Christin - and escaping Kivar's pursuit by leaving Earth. "Well, it reminded me of that place - except that the pictures on the wall were a little over the top - all those replica photographs of celebrities from just about every historical period back to the 1910's at least, and famous places all around the world."

"The fact that some of the lights were little glowing earth-balls was a bit weird too," Michael pointed out. "But I'm glad that we went."

"Yeah," Lonnie said in a quiet tone.

#

Ship's personal log.

Nobody was really happy to be awake this morning when Christin rousted us all out of our suites, saying that takeoff was in fifteen minutes and everybody had better bring ourselves and whatever we wanted to take along. I pretty much took her at her word, (well, except for the implication that they'd actually leave without some of us if we were a few minutes late,) pulled on a few clothes, gathered up my clothes and other essentials, plus the few souvenirs that I'd gotten down at the concourse, and spent the next eight or nine minutes helping Isabel pack up her own much more extensive shopping and convincing her that she really didn't need to get freshened up now, that everybody would be able to use the on-suite bathrooms back on board ship once we were there. I think it was actually more like half an hour before we were really set and all aboard, but that wasn't too bad under the circumstances I think, and possibly what Christin was hoping for when she said fifteen minutes. (If she'd allowed half an hour, it would probably have taken 50 minutes at least.)

We were rising out of the atmosphere by the time I actually heard anything about why the departure had been so sudden - actually, I'd just gotten out of the shower and was looking for Isabel, and she was with Max, asking Christin that very question.

"Basically, we saw one of the Breeolyn ships, a pretty tough cruiser, leaving its position and warping over here towards Kaltonin. After a bit of hurried discussion, the system defense commander and I agreed that if we moved our departure up as much as possible, we'd be well able to enter Warp ourselves without any real chance that they'd intercept us inside the gravity well, and that seemed a prudent move."

"Hmm... yeah, better not to let that ship get into the vicinity of the colony, where it could play cat and mouse with us, while we were still around," Isabel admitted. "So, did we make it in time?"

"Well, let's see." Christin pulled up a computer display on the wall and looked at some readings. "Estimated time to warp space transit, nineteen nimins. And, based on the best estimates from the Kaalto warp sensors, it'll be twice that before the enemy arrive." She smiled. "We're laughing. They won't even try to follow us through hyperspace, especially once they see that we're heading towards the interference zone, and won't know at first what we've got up our sleeves."

"In that case, you might not have hurried us **quite** that much," Max put in, but from the tone of his voice, that was a joke - he understood about the need to be better safe than sorry in a situation like this. Anything might have slowed us down getting out of the solar system. That was about when Isabel noticed me, and Max went off to find Liz, and the five of us ended up sitting in the ship's lounge watching our progress on computer diagrams of the projected course, waiting until we were safely away.

"So, one thing I thought of - umm, recently, but couldn't find a good time to ask down on Kaalto," Isabel put in. "What sort of holidays are there in... in Antarian society, or the others nearby? Do they vary much from planet to planet?"

"Oh, quite a lot," Christin said with a smile. "And they get figured in several different calendars, which makes things confusing. Let's see..."

"Actually, that came up with Neil, while you guys were sleeping," Max told her. "He was telling us about getting out of school for the Founder's day celebration - an anniversary of when settlement construction first began on the planet, according to the local solar year. Good food, gathering with strangers, public light and music shows, that kind of deal."

"Yeah, a lot of colony worlds have something of the sort," Christin agreed, "including Vrelayan, though the details differ. There, they have a marking of the first exploratory party landing, called - well, the local term is Gorveenar, and I'm not sure where the term comes from actually. Among other things, you're supposed to make a list of the blessings in your life and the reasons you're glad you live there..." Liz snickered at the implied patriotism there, "... and give little tokens of apreciation to people in your life, especially the ones you're not particularly close to, like work associates and club members. Spending time with family on Gorveenar is also big, which means that it's resented by some people, who don't have family around to go back to."

"Alright," I said. "We don't really need a whole big list I think - that's enough to get an idea. There's more in the computer, yeah?"

"Definitely," Christin insisted. "I'm surprised by all of the cultural stuff that they can come up with sometimes, though finding the right search term to look under can be tricky."

"Yeah, but the crossreferences help," Max said. "It just figures that you'd ask about holidays, Izzie."

"Hey, what do you..." she trailed off, blushing slightly. "Oh, no, come on, you're not going to bring up..."

"Isabel has a habit of getting very, um, well, of throwing herself into holiday festivities to a slightly insane level of intensity," Max said to Christin, who probably looked the most confused out of all of us, though I was probably giving her a run for her money. "Christmas was her favorite back home, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Gorveenar Nazi has just come into existence."

"Max!" Isabel exclaimed crossly.

"I... I don't understand," Christin said, not sounding much more impressed. "What did the Nazis have to do with intensity around the holidays?"

"I admit I'm a little stumped on that one myself," I said, reaching out a supportive hand to Isabel.

"Nothing directly, and it's kinduv a mean joke," Liz said, looking knives at Max herself. "One of the other things that the Nazis got a reputation for beyond the strictly obvious was for controlling even tiny things to excessively tight specifications - how people ran their businesses, what the streets looked like, I dunno what else. So when somebody has a very clear vision of, say, a perfect Christmas, and is very insistent on everything living up to that ideal - she gets dubbed 'The Christmas Nazi.'"

"I... I never thought you minded **that** much, Iz," Max said, not that convincingly.

"Did you never hear about... no, I forgot, you weren't in Roswell for Christmas," Liz said, looking at me. "Tess had taken you 'off to Sweden' by then. I always thought that was really weird - what sort of a student exchange program takes kids away from their families just in time for the holidays?"

"Well, probably once Tess had gotten home from New York, and her struggle with Rath and Lonnie - she had everything that she needed to put her plan into operation except for the book translation, and couldn't wait for Alex to give her that," Max said unhappily. "As soon as she had the plan she started to go with it."

"Yeah, I wondered about that," Isabel said in a low voice. "The powers that Tess used to control Alex, to subvert you a bit too Max - was that something that she'd already known, or something that Lonnie had, or something that she synthesized out of a bunch of different parts?"

"Rath talked about that, when I was supposedly dead," I told her. "Apologized for it, even." That got people's attention. "I don't think that either of them have done it lately, but back in New York, they both altered people's brains with a contact connection - nothing too subtle, but a good way of changing somebody's mind quickly. Tess must have seen that, and realized how she could do it less obviously and better with a refinement of her mindwarp powers."

"Ahh," Liz said. There was a long pause. "Okay, this topic of conversation is dead - and how close are we to that warp point?"

"Four minutes or so left - you guys don't have to wait here."

"Nah - at least for me, I'd rather see it through," Max put in. "Wouldn't say no to some breakfast, though."

That notion was greeted by agreement from the other three of us, since nobody had really had time for food yet during the day, and by the time anybody was done with eating, we'd gone through the transition, (it was a bit of a rough transit and Isabel spilled some orange juice when the ship shook,) and started the hyperspace hop without incident - not that anybody really expected anything interesting.

Isabel and I went back to our room after and fooled around again. Well, no, actually, fooling around together was what we used to do - we made love. It seems odd to type those words in, but they make sense. I really do love her a lot, and sometimes I can believe I was lucky enough for her to fall in love with me too. Hopefully I never manage to screw this up.

#

"Hmm?" Michael cocked his head at the door of the room he shared with Maria, (until Ava managed to convince Maria to give it up, if that ever happened, at least.) There was some sound that he could just about hear, even through the fairly good soundproofing, though he couldn't really make out what it was. Not wanting to interrupt Maria, he checked the door programming, and saw that she'd set it on semi-private, where he could come in without getting cross-approval from her, but not otherwise. Well, all right. He slipped in quickly, so as not to disturb anyone else with whatever...

... loud alien music was playing inside. Maria looked up from the desk area, must have immediately caught a look of surprise and displeasure crossing his face, and cut the volume. A few seconds later, perhaps on a second thought, the sound was either cut off entirely or paused. "Umm, hey, how's it going?" she asked.

"Well... not badly, actually," he admitted, "but I have to admit, I can't quite stop from wondering just what that was and why you were listening to it."

"Okay, let's see," she said as he sat down. "It's called 'Your love sucks me in like silver sand', and it's number one on the most recent Antarian hit parade that Kaalto had gotten, which was about ten days old."

"Hmm." Michael smiled at the thought. "So they have top forty countdowns on Antar?"

"Top thirty actually, which seems a bit low to me, but who am I to tell them how to run their music industry?" Maria laughed. "At least, not to start. Gotta run with the industry as it is, at least in terms of conventions. Actual artistic ideas I can introduce early, they might be a 'hook' that'd let me get a foot in the door early."

"So - you're familiarizing yourself with the alien pop music scene in order to try and break into it as a performer?" he asked.

"Considering it," she admitted. "Not sure if I'll have much luck with such a... a public path to my life, considering that I'm with you and you're already a politically controversial figure yourself, or what, but..." She sighed. "I always wanted to try for the big time with music, and if I can, I'd still like to try that, even if it isn't the same big time scene that I always pictured."

"I have to say, I think that that's amazing," Michael told her, reaching out to hold her hand in his, and stroke the top of her forearm. "Show them that Earth girls know how to rock it. Teach 'em a thing or two about the old blues, or... wait a second." He took a deep breath. "I know that nobody's ever said anything, but do you think there's any possibility that Elvis really was abducted by space aliens?"

"I checked in the library," Maria told him with a straight face. Michael blinked. "Nope. Not even a breath of truth to _that_ rumor, as far as I can tell. Apparently, there was a group of tourists who were really obsessed with the Beatles and made a serious attempt to kidnap them, but... well, it didn't actually come to much, although one of their London bodyguards ended up dead." She sighed.

"Seriously?" Michael asked. Maria nodded. "Tourists from where?"

"Umm... one of the five planets - Talernar?"

"Taliernar," Michael corrected automatically. "Okay, well... I didn't mean to interrupt you..."

"No, it's okay, I can only listen to so much of this stuff right now." Maria got up, walked over to the bed, and sort of fell onto it so that she was sitting across Michael's lap. "I need to have a different kind of fun."

"Hmm... just what did you have in mind?" Michael teased, but already Maria was taking off her top and wriggling around on top of him in a way that made pretty clear what was on her mind.

"Have - have you thought about what you'll do 'once we get there'?" she asked him afterwards, the two of them lying side by side, both feeling very relaxed and satisfied. "I mean... will you join up with the rebel armed forces, and be a general, like... like the original Rath was? Or - or try art again, or cooking, or - well, I don't know what."

"Hmm... haven't put a great deal of thought into a specific role in life on an alien planet," Michael admitted. "Guess I thought it might take quite a while to settle in and learn enough to even understand what all the options are. I mean, when you think about it - yes, people around our age are supposed to have some idea 'what they want to do' with their life, to be mature enough to pick something and go after it - but there's this hidden assumption that they've learned enough about their world in nineteen-odd years to have a clear idea what choices are open to them, and what they have a reasonable chance of achieving. Well, we've learned plenty in our nineteen-odd years, but most of it was about Earth, and earth isn't where we're going to be, so I think that an extension isn't too unreasonable. I... I do want to know more about the fight against Kivar, though I'm not terribly eager to put myself in any great danger now that you're in my life, especially since I know that it would be really hard for you to sit home while I'm off on a mission or anything like that, and I don't think that you have the temperament to sign up and go with me either." Maria snorted in complete agreement about that last judgement.

"And yeah, I want to learn more about art, and cooking, and if I really have any talents in those areas that are actually worthwhile in the Antarian world. Obviously working a short-order grill isn't something that will really apply to my life any more, but you never know if the basic idea might apply somehow."

"Well, that's fair I admit," Maria said, and sighed. "Maybe I should just take some time off and learn too, before diving into something new." All of a sudden the walls and the bed trembled again, and when that was over there was a faint siren going **whee-wee, whee-wee.** "What's that, now?"

"Umm... we're out of hyperspace," Michael guessed, reaching for some pants. "Warp space, sorry. Either there's an enemy ship in range, or..."

"Or what?" Maria asked him, looking halfway between upset and scared.

"Or - well, if everything is going according to plan, then we've emerged from warp space into the Einsteinian universe at a significant fraction of light speed, relative to the closest stars. Maybe the siren is just to warn everybody about that - this sort of speed we're talking about can be dangerous."

"Yeah, but I never really understood that," Maria said, pulling on some clothes herself - an oversized sleeveless sweater that would fall halfway down her thighs. "It's not like there's really traffic out here that we might crash into. All of the other ships this far from a star system will be in hyperspace, and thus we can't collide with them."

"I'm not sure I understand all the details myself," Michael put in. "But just because there might not be any ships - any contructed artifacts... and there might be somebody around here who doesn't know how to reach warp space and is getting from A to B the slow way - well, that doesn't mean that outer space is empty."

"You mean asteroids or meteoroids drifting around between stars?" Maria asked. "I'm not the astronomy whiz like Liz is, but I know that those are really rare."

"Maybe - but considering how far we're going, it's just possible that we might hit one anyway, and hardly see it coming before we do." Now Michael was shrugging on a kind of vest that didn't close in the chest and heading straight out the door. Maria followed. "Think more like dust and gas, though - not much of it at all, but too much and too small to see and avoid, and every little bit of it we're colliding with at high speeds. High enough that the particles of gas, as I understand it, begin to take on the properties of deadly radiation."

"Oh, man," Maria mumbled, seeing it. "So what can we do about that?"

"Just a moment." Michael poked his head into the games room, and chuckled. "Hey, guys, we started the run?"

"Yeah, looks like it," Max agreed. A bunch of board game counters were sitting ignored on the table as he, Liz, Christin, and Captain Variun were checking more important displays and schematics of their course and the ship's systems. "Everything looks nominal. We're waiting on a broadcast from Kaalto, to feed us the positions of the Breoll ships and tell us how hard and fast we're gonna have to push the limit."

"Good," Michael said. "Now, can one of you bright people explain to my darling Maria this reverse ramscoop field? And tell it to me again as well, because I'm still not sure that I really get it."

"Hmm." Liz looked at the aliens, who didn't seem to want to volunteer, and then over at Max. "Why don't you start, mister sci fi reader?" she told him gently. "I'll be ready to jump in with the hard science, but you explain it pretty well, and maybe I was getting too technical for Michael and the others last time."

"Hmm... okay - why don't we sit down over there?" Max suggested, waving to the other end of the room, away from where Christin and Variun were working. "Well, I think that the idea started with a real rocket scientist, back in the sixties, not an author or anything, though it was picked up in the science fiction field pretty quickly. To build a rocket ship capable of travelling between stars, the most obvious problem was carrying enough fuel. And at high speeds, hydrogen gas between the stars was also a possible hazard."

"Yeah, Michael explained that part to me okay, I think," Maria said.

"The idea of the ram scoop was to turn those gases into a fuel source. You generate a fairly strong cone-shaped magnetic field in front of your ship, and it charges the gas particles and then sucks them in towards your forward fuel port. You feed the concentrated hydrogen gas into a nuclear fusion engine, shoot the exhaust from that engine out the back of the ship as your rocket thrust, and draw power from it to feed the magnetic field and the rest of your ship's systems."

"Sounds like a good idea," Maria said a bit doubtfully. "If you have a nuclear fusion engine and powerful enough magnetic fields."

"Yeah," Max said. "Now, in this ship, we don't need a ramscoop for fuel - I'm not going to try going into detail about how the power sources work, but they've been topped up and are good for weeks. And there's no need for solid propellant, even if we need to increase our speed - the same technology that gives us artificial gravity inside the ship can be used as a reactionless engine - a force that will push us forward through space without anything having to go backward."

"Yeah..." Maria was starting to wonder what all of this had been leading to.

"But we **do** need protection against gasses and dust in space, so we turn the ramscoop field idea around, literally. Instead of a funelling cone to channel all that stuff inwards to a particular part of the ship, we use a sort of a point-forward cone, or a bullet-shaped field, that drives those small particles away and around us. It doesn't work perfectly, any more than the other kind of field would, but it should protect us reasonably at speeds of up to point one five cee, easily - for a day or two, at least."

"And we're waiting for the information from Kaalto, to see if that's going to be enough to outrun any Breoll ships who might be running towards us at warpspace speeds on the other side of the blocade, yeah?" Maria asked, and Liz nodded gravely. "So when do we find out?"

"Not for a while, yet," Liz admitted. "We don't need to accelerate immediately no matter what, and it'll be hard for them to get a fix on us, especially we're moving so fast."

"Hey," Michael put in. "Does the speed difference mean that the signal they send us gets... red-shifted?"

"It would, if it were radio or some other form of lightspeed-based radiation. Apparently, with the hyperwave stuff they use to communicate more quickly, things get more complicated than that with high velocities," Max said.

"Well, if it's more complicated than red-shifting and blue-shifting, then I don't want to hear about it," Maria said. "How about we try playing that game? If our good crew won't be able to get back to it anytime soon."

"Please, go ahead," Christin said. "We should probably be doing this elsewhere anyway."

"Alright, so what are the rules?" Michael asked.

#

Isabel happened upon Kyle, just standing in the hallway and staring at a few numbers on one of the walls. "Hey, what's so fascinating?"

"Just trying not to get completely freaked out," he muttered. "Point one eight cee relative to Kaalto, radiation exposure level from the shield leakage reaching approximately one point nine five rems per hour." He sighed. "I don't like the sound of that 'rems per hour' thing, and not just because I don't really know what it means. It's going to take us more than a day and a half to cross this thing even at such high speeds, which means that we're gonna get... what, sixty, seventy rems total?"

"Which is right under the level of 'mild radiation sickness,' if I have it right," Isabel assured him. At seventy five rem exposure. That's probably why they picked this speed - we're pushing things about as hard as we can without getting to that point."

"But we may have to push even harder, based on how things go with that Breoll ship that's going to try to catch us on the other side of the blocade, right?" Kyle asked, and Isabel made an uh-huh sound. "Also, that seventy-five rems figure, is that for human, Rahlicx, shapeshifters, or hybrids?"

"Oooh, you had to ask that, huh?" Kyle nodded. "Well, if we're going to keep talking about this stuff, let's not do it here. Is Rath back in your room?"

"No, I think he's in the lounge with Ava," he explained. "What about Alex?"

"Playing checkers with Maria in the game room." They headed inside, and Kyle say on his bunk while Isabel took the single chair available. "Seventy-five is humans. I think that the alien crew are hardier, and will be able to stand up to a hundred or so without problems."

"What about hybrids?" Kyle asked, and Isabel stayed silent. "Come on, with all of the halfbreeds running around the local area, they must have some idea."

"They do - but it seems to vary widely depending on the specific genetic factors inherited from each side." Isabel groaned. "Range roughly from seventy to ninety, if I remember the figures that Christin showed us. Nobody's done that much testing, because although there are a lot of hybrids around, they aren't seen as especially... important or anything."

"And... and since all of you guys aren't just ordinary hybrids, but specially engineered people - to pass as humans on earth and not show obvious signs of your Antarian sides, among other things..."

"Then nobody really knows how we'll react under cosmic radiation exposure," Isabel admitted. "But don't worry - even if we get sick, that doesn't mean it'll be anything life-threatening or crippling."

"Hmm... just what **is** radiation sickness like, then?" Kyle asked. "Guess all I know about radiation I learned in the movies."

"Basically, you can't eat much, you feel really tired, and you barf." Isabel giggled nervously. "Takes a few weeks to get over."

"Oh, now that's a lovely image, people getting sick here on a crowded ship..."

"Yeah, I know," Isabel admitted. "But obviously that's a lot better than getting anemia or problems having kids later on, or stuff like that."

"Eww," Kyle remarked succintly. "How much exposure do we have to get before we're worried about stuff like that."

"Not sure," Isabel admitted uncomfortably. "The reference I found said that issues like that generally don't crop up until you're around two hundred rem, but every type of radiation is different and cosmic stuff is more prone to permanent damage than most others." She sighed. "But they're doing everything possible to keep it from coming to that. To a certain extent, it's just morbid to dwell."

"Hmm... okay," Kyle admitted after a moment. "D'you wanna try catching up with Ava and Liz? I heard her say that they'd be watching Gevinian movies in the royal cabin."

"Hmm..." Isabel wondered briefly which 'her' Kyle had heard, but it didn't really matter."Sure I guess, as long as they don't mind company. On the other hand, I kind of feel a bit hungry now." Was that a subconscious drive to assure herself that she wasn't sick yet, since one of the warning signs was loss of appetite?

"Well, they have a perfectly good food slot, and I don't think anybody would mind you using it," Kyle pointed out, which was perfectly true of course. As they headed up the corridor, Isabel tried to think of something else nice to say to Kyle.

"Best of luck trying to figure out what to do about the whole Tess/Lonnie thing, by the way."

Kyle made a bit of a surprised face at the way that she'd put that, and Isabel was a little startled at what had come out herself, but at least it was something that she really meant. "Thanks. Of course, it's strongly tempting to just stay away from both of them and see what my other dating prospects look like when we get to Sanctuary - assuming of course that I'm not some hideous radiation-scarred wreck by then." Isabel was tempted to stick her tongue out at him for that one, but couldn't bring herself to, so she just scoffed. "Some of the hybrid girls back at the club on Kaalto were pretty cute, and the one I managed to strike up a conversation with seemed cool personally as well. Heck, even a pure-blooded alien wouldn't be entirely out of the question. Little hybrids have to come from somewhere - not that I'm eager to father any alien girl's children, I just mean - obviously it's happened before."

"Yeah, I guess that's true," Isabel admitted, and was very glad that they'd arrived at the door and she could signal for entry. Ava called to come in, and they did.

They were in the middle of something called "The soulfulness of Alfarren leaves', and Isabel thought it was pretty good, though Kyle didn't think there were nearly enough aircar chases. They all got boneless roast chicken and macaroni with tomato-chile sauce from the food slot.


	7. Chapter 7

Personal log:

We're more than halfway through the interference zone, but things are getting tight and pretty much everybody's on edge. The Breoll ship that's coming to intercept our projected exit point got going earlier than anyone expected when the details of the plan were being worked out, you see, and that kind of puts us behind a rock and a hard place. Push our engines harder, and we'll escape free and clear - but everybody gets a big dose of pseudo-cosmic rays.

If, on the other hand, we don't go fast enough and the enemy ship intercepts our position - well, I've heard Max and Christin talk about tactical contingency scenarios, but as far as I can tell, the only sure way we'd have to avoid getting captured would be to let the engine go boom and destroy ourselves. The Breoll ship isn't heavily armed - probably just has a simple ray gun and a few rocket bombs - but we're a courier ship, entirely without weapons except for the alien powers of the crew and passengers. Which aren't entirely to be discounted, but if it came to using them in a space fight - nobody's saying this for my sure, but I'd guess we had a ten percent chance of coming out on top, including trickery. Not too encouraging.

Isabel seems distracted all the time, and I'm sure that I've caught her checking to see if she has any of the three big symptoms of radiation poisioning already. Max and Liz don't seem to be letting it get to them, and I'd want to be hanging around with them, except that it's pretty clear that they want to spend a lot of 'couple time' alone together, and being a third wheel is not really so attractive an idea. Let's see, what else.

Haven't seen much of the crew, even Christin, since she's been working on making sure that the Breoll can't jam the broadcast from Kaalto, which would put us all suddenly in the dark as to their locations. The one exception is Jevrok, since his crew duties are mostly about taking care of us passengers, and he's been doing anything he can think of to help us feel more at ease - and by now I think he's frustrated that nothing's working too well. It probably doesn't help that he also has to do double duty as the medic, and has been preparing medications for radiation treatment and asking people if they feel okay every five minutes or so.

I asked him about those medications, by the way - apparently they're not preventative and you're not supposed to start treatment until symptoms have developed, which means that it does make sense for him to be asking. On a mild case, they don't kick in well enough to stop you from feeling miserable at first, but you 'bounce back' quicker or at least don't feel the effects after the first few days, as long as you stay on your dose. So that's some kind of a relief at least.

Michael, Maria, Rath, and Ava have all agreed to do the room switch, mostly I think because doing it now and moving everybody's stuff back and forth is a distraction from the waiting game. I've helped them carry some clothes etcetera, and so has Isabel, both of us wanting to get in on some of the diversioney goodness. Just hope that Maria doesn't regret her agreement to room wth Lonnie - she's been pretty nice ever since we got onto the ship actually, but I know that everybody is still wondering if she's going to suddenly change her spots back.

Guess that sort of covers everybody. I'm probably going to go do some more research on the alien computer programming stuff that I began before we got to Kaalto, maybe try running some travelling salesman problems and similar stuff through the ship's computer. It's quantum-based, the same technology as the one in Las Cruces that Tess sent me to, but the Antarians have had a while longer to figure out how best to use the best processor technolog in infinite dimensions... or something like that. I still can't quite get my brain around the descriptions of how quantum computing work.

#

"Oh, man, I don't feel good," Michael muttered, getting up from the table and the sort-of three dee jigsaw puzzle that they were building. The pieces of this particular diversion were actually tangible, little bits of metal and ceramic that fitted together in only particular ways. The computer could simulate flat jigsaw puzzles with pictures on a screen, but actually interacting wiith real objects, (if ones that had been made specifically for them when they decided to start a puzzle,) was a refreshing change after playing so long with simulated cards and board game pieces. "Like, for real this time."

"Oh, no," Maria breathed. As the rem exposure count got above fifty, everybody had been starting to feel slightly hypochondiracal and queasy, but Michael hadn't been prone to false alarms as dramatic as this announcement was. "What, what should we do, find a sink or toilet?"

"The ones in the rooms are probably too far," Michael said, swaying uncertainly for a moment. However, his next instinct seemed to be on target.

"Go for the recycler waste disposal," Isabel suggested just as Michael headed over to that particular compartment, right next to the food ordering slot.

"Is that really a good idea?" Kyle asked, as Michael pulled open the door, stared inside for a moment, and then made a burp and grimaced at the sour taste of it. "I mean, what if it clogs the mechanisms or something? We don't want to break that." And right at that point, Michael retched straight into the intake."

"Um, it should be alright," Liz said. "I mean, that disposal isn't just for dry stuff, it can take leftover food, even messy stuff, or - or drinks or whatever."

"Didn't Jevrok say that it was okay?" Isabel asked. "I remember that Alex actually asked him about safe places to barf a little while ago."

"Hmm... well, I guess we'll see," Maria said. "You feeling alright Isabel?"

"Um - yeah, I think so," she admitted, "but if Michael's actually feeling symptoms and hasn't just managed to psych himself into somatics, then I'll probably be showing them too, soon." She reconsidered, and turned to Alex. "Actually, I do feel a bit peaked."

"Maybe you should go lie down, then," he suggested. "Get some rest, and if you do feel queasy, you'll be only steps away from the can." He thought about that a bit longer. "Probably should make sure that the can isn't retracted into the bathroom wall, though."

"Yeah," she agreed, and kissed him on the cheek before leaving. "Liz, you gonna go check on your mate?"

"Hmm... might be good to warn him about Michael, at that," Liz said, running a hand through her hair pensively. "On the other hand, if there's any way that nerves could add to the situation, I don't really want to spread them around."

"Well, I'm going to go tell Jevrok," Maria put in. "The sooner we can put Michael on his meds, the better."

"Good idea," Michael agreed weakly. He had closed up the disposal again and was sitting very limply on the floor and leaned up against the wall. "I definitely don't want to let myself in for three weeks of this."

"Yeah, that's okay," Alex agreed. "He's probably in his cabin or the infirmary." Both of these locations were aft in the ship. "I'll go fore."

"Hmm... are you spreading the news?" Liz asked. Max was probably fore, watching in the cockpit or someplace else, and it didn't really matter much if Liz refused to go and scare Max with the fact that his best friend had thrown up if Alex told him, after all.

"Umm - not deliberately, but I won't stay quiet if it's on topic," Alex said. "Don't worry."

"Well, okay." She turned back to the puzzle, keeping one eye on Michael, and Alex left the room. He thought about stopping at the second passenger cabin from the fore, which was theirs, but Isabel probably didn't need him popping in and checking on her already. In the cockpit, Max was indeed watching the forward viewing port and the screens with an intense, worried look, as Flaii and Variun went about their business silently. Quietly, Alex asked how things were going.

"Not so good," Max muttered. "Looks like things are going to be very dicey, avoiding the intercept. We're going to have to accelerate more, in a little bit."

That hadn't been anything that Alex had expected. "But... but Michael just barfed in the game room," he blurted out. It hadn't been at all how he'd expected to break the news, but what Max had said drove every other consideration out of his head with surprise.

"Already?" Variun muttered, irritated and just a bit worried. "We're hardly past four hundred... err, sixty rems." The sudden substitution started Alex even more, until he realized that 'roentgen equivalent in man' was a human equivalent that had caught on when Liz had started the monitoring program using it, and that the Rahlicx and Antarians probably had their own scale with different units. (Why were they making such a point of using ours, though, Alex wondered?)

"Sixty-three point nine," Flaiisar said, reading the first few digits off a slowly mounting indicator on the control board right in front of his seat.

"Still," Max muttered, looking around with a troubled expression on his face. "We thought that everybody would be safe from showing symptoms until reaching seventy."

"Maybe that was too optimistic a guess," Alex said, very slowly. "I mean, I know that you didn't really have any other info to go on - but you guys aren't really the same as natural hybrids. Your genes were carefully picked by the protectors, to show particular characteristics, and being sturdy under radiation exposure probably wasn't a criterion that they prized particularly highly."

"Right," Max agreed. "Well, I feel okay... how's everybody else?"

"Isabel said that she was a bit tired, went to lie down - and was talking about making sure that the toilet was ready just in case. Actually, no, that was me worrying about her more than Isabel herself..."

"Right," he said. "You - you realize that we still have to speed up, right? We **need** to get out into warp space before the Breoll can catch us - if we don't, then Michael got sick for nothing."

"Hmm... yeah, I got that," Alex agreed reluctantly, though the worry was starting to gnaw at him now.

"It's not like we'll be increasing our exposure all that much," Variun told them, though even he was starting to look a little bit apprehensive now. "We'll be out and into hyperspace sooner, where there's no particles to hit us, so even though the rate goes up higher, the lower duration partially offsets that."

"Yeah, I see that," Alex told him. Out of respect he didn't point out that it was completely obvious to anyone, though irritation at the whole situation actually tempted him. "Well, umm - rather not hang around here and watch, so I guess I'll go back and..." what? Try to read or listen to music in the cabin while Isabel was resting, which would probably disturb her? Try and stick some more pieces onto that stupid puzzle? He needed to find something else to distract him, but wasn't sure what.

"Good idea," Max said, even though Alex hadn't really gotten to much of an idea, good or bad. "I'll come with - could use a break from this stuff actually I guess." Alex nodded as some kind of a reply to this, and led the way out of the cockpit. As they got a few paces away Max cleared his throat. "Oh, by the way, would you be one of my groomsmen for the big wedding?"

Alex actually tripped over his own feet and crashed into the wall at that point, for no very good reason - he wasn't **that** surprised by the question, though it seemed a little out of the black sky, and there hadn't been so much as a tremor in the ship. "You're starting to plan it already?"

"Well, not really... I just thought I'd get some of the asking people stuff out of the way. Liz hasn't... well, last I knew she was still a bit stuck on who to invite to be her maid of honor."

"Right," Alex agreed. "Maria and Ava the front runners?" Max grunted an acknowledgement. Liz's oldest and best friend, and the 'sister' that she had only recently realized she had, who she had also grown very close to. Yeah, that could get sticky. Alex decided that Maria would probably get the job, unless she deliberately stepped aside and let Ava have it, because generally she was less secure and would have a harder time dealing with Liz picking someone else. "And I guess that you don't have that problem with naming a best man - it'd be Michael of course."

"Pretty much the size of it... which makes it very important to me that he doesn't get **too** irradiated," Max shot back dryly. "Oh, hi sweetie."

"Hey." Liz had stepped out of the games room just as they approached. "He spilled, huh?" That was said to Max, as he put an arm around her, and pointing a playful thumb over at Alex.

"Yeah, it kinduv slipped out when I found out that things are going to get worse before they get better," Alex said in a low tone back. "We're going to speed up - maybe already have."

"Ohh."

"And I think that maybe we should do something with Alex to help keep his mind off things, so that Izzie can get the rest she wants," Max suggested. "Not more puzzling. How about watching some galactica?"

"Sure I guess," Alex agreed, and Liz nodded as well. That was the old seventies version - part of the media that they'd traded for. "How did you... guess so much about how I was feeling? It seemed a little... faintly creepy actually. Or is it just easy to tell what's going on with me by the looks on my face?"

"Not that hard, actually," Liz said, leading the way back up to their room. "Though I'm not sure I could have told the part about you not wanting to puzzle anymore."

"I actually got a very faint flash," Max explained. "About you knowing the thing all over the game room - at least I assume it's the same puzzle. I haven't seen it since much work was started on it."

"Hmm." Alex considered. He hadn't been aware of that as even an idle daydream, but it was hard to deny that Max had gotten some insight into his state of mind from the image. "Oh - we'll have to keep the sound pretty low, if we're watching in your room, so that Isabel won't be able to get it."

"I don't think that'll be a problem," Liz said. "The soundproofing's okay for stuff like this. But maybe we could take the lounge, if nobody's there."

"I'll check," Max poked his head in. "Oh, hi Maria, Michael, Jevrok. How's the patient doing?" Alex couldn't really hear the answer. "Well, buck up - I guess that you'll be over the whole thing before any of the rest of us are."

Liz smiled just slightly and opened the door into the room that she shared with Max, pulling up the media library on the computer screen that covered the left wall as seen from the door.

#

It only took a few hours before all six of the 'pod squadders' were feeling the effects of cosmic particle bombardment. The rest of the passengers occupied themselves with helping their beloved aliens feel more comfortable - Maria taking care of Michael, of course... Liz Max, and Alex Isabel. Kyle, offered an unspoken choice, made his feelings clear by attending to Ava and generally ignoring her New York compatriots except when it would be completely rude and insensitive to deny them a simple request. Jevrok took up the slack with Rath and Lonnie, though, dealing with both of them as competently as any professional nurse could have, and also served to help with the others whenever they needed something more than amateur nursing and genuine TLC.

Pretty much everybody was well enough to watch the screens for the final few minutes though. The Breoll had managed to jam their incoming signal from Kaalto, and every counterjamming routine that Christin had managed to try failed to clear up all the interference, so nobody really knew how close that one enemy ship was to catching them. Of course, it couldn't really alter its speed or course while still in hyperspace jump, not without switching to a new destination - but their warp sensor readings hadn't been precise enough to say definitively what the original course had been, how quickly it would arrive to the very second, or exactly where in the area it would re-insert to normal space. Also, they weren't entirely sure where the interference zone ended, although sensor readings would make it clear when that border had been crossed, and they were safe to jump to warp themselves. Varium had a new course all laid in and ready for Flaiisar to engage once they were sure it would be alright.

"We've got what looks like insertion signature... fraggin' close," Christin reported over the intercom, which everybody was patched into now. "Confirmed. Only around forty thousand clicks away from our projected course - still much further than that ahead, but we'll be there soon at our current speed - maybe one minute." She gasped. "Launching missiles toward us - probably can't face the idea that we might be able to slip by them, and... shirrit, we don't have any anti-missile decoys on board, do we?"

"One actually, though it's kinduv old," Flaii announced. "Launched."

"Any chance that one decoy will get - how many missiles is it?" Michael asked. Maria tried to call up enough of a tactical display to answer him, but things seemed to be progressing much too quickly, and...

The ship rocked with shrapnel and energy blasts hitting their meager shields, but not any direct impact. "All missiles have detonated at extreme range," Christin announced. "Estimating warp space capability in five seconds - three seconds..."

"We have positive warp diagnostic!" Variun announced. "Laying in course!" And with a whoosh and a great shaking of the whole ship, the stars disappeared outside, replaced by the telltale colors of warp space.

"Okay, so first - what happened with the missiles?" Liz asked over the intercom.

"No," Christin said. "First - any signs of warp pursuit?"

"Not sure, but yes," Variun answered her, "there does seem to be a trace of another vessel following our slipstream. It's not getting stronger, though, so based on that they're not terribly close to us."

"And so, unlikely to follow?" Alex put in.

"Not likely, no," Flaii said. "As far as the missiles - there were three of them, and two actually went for the decoy I launched, which I wouldn't have expected. Christin, the third? I think that you did something about that..."

"Projected energy out into space to act as another decoy," she said. "Kind of a slim chance, but it worked." She sighed. "We're clear, we're out of radiation danger, and if the Breoll ship maanged to follow us all the way through our warpspace trail, when we'll deal with that in five days."

"Alright, go team," Kyle said. "Any other questions?"

There was the sound of somebody else contributing back to the toilet. "Oh. Guess that's not a question."

"Not really, man. Sorry."

"Alex?" Kyle asked. "Oh, no - you've come down with it too?"

"Not too surprised," Liz put in. "Final exposure was eighty-four point seven rems. We've probably all been repressing our own illness because of trying to take care of our friends." There was a faint sigh. "I really do feel pretty tired, come to think of it."

"Well, I think that I'm starting to feel better," Michael put in. "Guess the meds are starting to kick in at last. Oh, and you should probably report for your own diagnosis, Whitman."

"Yeah, thanks, man," he replied weakly.

#

By three days later, everybody pretty much had the barfing thing down under control, and another ship could clearly be seen in what Flaii and Variun described as 'the slipstream' behind them. As far as Christin would say, (1) it would insert back into real space maybe five or six seconds after they did, within a range of 50 kilometers or so, (2) it would have other weapons to bring to bear against them as soon as that happened, and (3) she was worried.

"Is there some way to use hyperspace itself to attackc them?" Maria brainstormed out loud in the rec room. "I mean - I realize that things are kind of complicated, but we're ahead of them, both travelling at insane velocities - can't we throw something back that they're going to have to run straight into?"

"Well, for one thing, it isn't as eaily as throwing something behind us and having it drift towards them in the slipstream," arium said solemnly, taking her suggestion seriously. "Releasing something massive and letting it 'drift' out of range of the discontinuity manifold - the warpspace drive - can be very dangerous for **us**. It won't drift back through warpspace because warp space travel is generally limited to characteristic velocities - except for some particular small variations - like the one that they used to follow our slipstream **slightly** faster than us and come up behind us."

"How dangerous?" Rath asked. Maria, Varium, and Max all glared at him. "Sorry, just curious. Would we explode?"

"Hmm... not directly," Varium said, "but whatever we were trying to throw at them would drop out of our warp space path, with explosive results even if it might not literally explode, and there'd be a shock wave of distorting space that would hit us. Not too many ships have tried it and brought back reports of what they went through - and I don't want us to be one of them."

"Or to be one of the ships who tries it and _don't_ bring back reports," Max put in. "Okay, so we can't really reach them while we're both in hyperspace, and they can't reach us. What else?"

"We're going to have to see what we can do to prepare," Christin put in with a small smile. "We may not be armed at the moment, but the fabrication systems are running well, and we still have days to prepare for this action. I think that's enough time."

"Exactly what are you going to fabricate for them?" Maria asked, but Christin just turned the edges fo her mouth down slightly in thought.

"I should get started on the parts that I know we'll need," she said, and hurried out the door. Max turned and looked over at Liz, who smiled a bit weakly. He went over to where she was sitting.

"Still feeling a bit queasy?" he asked her.

"No, just tired. That thing you tried, 'healing' my stomach lining, actually seems to have worked better than the meds for the nausea." She looked down at the dry ration wafers and water sitting in front of her. "Actually feeling hungry for something a bit more interesting than this."

"Hey, I remember how tired I was of them," Max agreed. Jevrok had insisted that the ration wafers had the benefit of being very easy to digest and fairly nutritious, which had started Liz reminiscing of how her mother used to serve out crackers when she and Maria had the stomach flu when they were seven. "Tell you what, finish this now, and then if you're still feeling okay later I'll order a midnight snack for you out of the food slot in our room."

Liz's eyes lit up slightly. "Pizza?" she whispered, so low that Max could hardly hear her.

"Pizza might be pushing it for the first time off rations - a hamburger?"

"Hmm... yeah, I'll take what I can get," she agreed. And immediately started munching down her ration wafers with every appearance of pleasure. "So, what else can we do to keep busy? I get the feeling that Christin doesn't want our help with the Breoll issue, or for anybody to poke their nose into her plans."

"Yeah, I guess so," Max admitted. "She knows that she can ask any of us to assist, and wouldn't do it all herself if there was any chance that would increase the danger to the ship. We, umm - we could record a new video letter to broadcast out - now that we're past the blocade proper, we shouldn't have any problems transmitting."

"Not once the ship chasing us is taken care of." Something in Liz's eyes looked haunted, showing a suspicion deep inside that 'taking care' of the Breoll vessel might not be as easily done as said. Christin had been projecting confidence, but what if all that she, or any of them, could do was get a slim chance of prevailing, or even fifty fifty even odds? Liz knew that the situation was never truly as hopeless as it seemed - all the close escapes that she'd made through, or any of them, ever since meeting Max had told her that there was always a way. But the scientist inside her head said that just because there was always a way didn't mean that it would always work, that the coin flip would always come up heads just because it seemed to have done so up until this point. One time, they might really get the bad end of a fight...

"Hey, come on - don't let you face go all down like that," Max said, reaching out to put his hand on her leg, and that simple touch was enough to make her smile.

"Alright. Well... yes, I like the idea of getting something ready to send to Alinda," Liz told him. "That may not take so long, though - as long as we're sending letters back and forth, it seems to make sense to keep them short, rather than keeping track of long missives and having seven topics of conversation going on in each one." She sighed. "If the transmission delay to Kaalto was only eight seconds or so, then it'll be getting even shorter as we get closer, right? Maybe we could try talking to her live."

"Maybe," Max admitted. "Except that it requires keeping the connection open for longer. When we were at Kaalto, everybody knew that we were there, but now we kind of want to get lost again, and extended use of the communications array is still risky for that I think."

"Phooey," Liz pronounced, but she didn't really try to argue with the wisdom of that idea. "Oh, by the way, I've been meaning to mention this - did you know that the ship's library got extended further while we were docked?"

"Yeah, actually, Christin mentioned it," Max said a little vaguely. "What's the new stuff again?"

"Lots more on Vrelayan, to start with," Liz said with a smile, and Max brightened a bit too at the mention of their soon-to-be new home planet. "There's a lot more to it than the city of Landorin, which figures I suppose."

"Hmm, yeah, I guess," Max admitted. "I know that the city is a stop on a fairly remote trade route, but with a whole planet there would probably have to be parts that aren't deserted. Like what?" He paused. "Lonnie mentioned some scenic hills, actually, back when we were barreling through upstate New York."

"Yeah, I remember that," Liz said, and smiled. "That's Landorin state actually, and the city is nearly in the middle of it actually. But there's a big patch of forbidding rocky crags - bigger than Texas and California put together, at least.. that's all transuranics rush."

"Hmm?" Max frowned slightly in puzzlement. "The transuranics reference I get - those are stable elements heavier than any that have been discovered on Earth, right? Or semi-stable, still pretty radioactive, but at least they don't break down and disappear in microseconds."

"Yeah," Liz agreed. "So it's the 'rush' part that's confusing you?" Max nodded. "Think, like the Alaskan gold rush."

"Huh, really?" Max asked, and Liz nodded. "With prospectors working stakes and boom towns and everything? Huh - I'd have thought that if there was valuable stuff to be mined, they'd be more likely to go for super-efficient strip mining or something like that, not old fashioned single prospectors."

"Well, it's not exactly old-fashioned," Liz said. "I didn't really understand all of the reasons why, but there's weather conditions and something that futzes with the workings of big heavy machinery, so that a large-scale automated mining operation would be more trouble than it's worth."

"Hmm... maybe we could go to a trans-rush town on our honeymoon - it'd be something different, I'm sure," Max said. "Do they use any protection when handling the... ore? From radiation and so on?"

"Probably, I'd think, but the computer doesn't say," Liz told him. "Okay, all done." Sure enough, the wafers that she had been munching through were all consumed, and only a little bit of water remained in her tumbler, which she drained theatrically.

"Alright." Max got up a second after Liz did and took her hand in his. "Do you want to do the video letter thing right now?"

"No, maybe just lie down and listen to some music or something," she said. "Nineties soft pop or something, definitely not that Rahlicx stuff."

"Okay, whatever my darling bride desires," Max insisted. "Especially when she's still not feeling quite well."

#

"We're still underweaponed, but hopefully we'll have the advantage of surprise," Christin admitted to Max, Michael, and Lonnie a few hours before the warp space hop ended. "They won't be expecting us to put up any kind of a fight... I really think that that's true. Breollyn aren't clever this way, making do out of what's easy to hand, and I think that they have a hard time anticipating resourcefulness in others."

"Okay," Michael said. "So we need to find a way to sock it to 'em when they're not expecting it and either kill them or cripple them while we jump again, and make sure that they don't follow us." Christin nodded. "Huh... can't believe I'm admitting to this, but all I can think of was that if this was Star Trek, we'd agree to drop our shields so that they could beam a landing party over, to take us prisoner, and then fire when they dropped their own shields for the transport."

"Well, this ain't no star trek," Lonnie shot back. "And none of us have transporter beams."

"It's not an idea that's completely without merit, though," Christin admitted. "If they wanted to take us into custody, then they'd order us to dock and go through the airlocks - and that would require both ships dropping their shields as well."

"Alright," Max said evenly. "What's the problem with it? Or is there more than one?"

"Well, let's see. Breoll being Breoll, they might well fire on us before boarding, just to make sure that we're crippled too and to make sure that we don't try any funny tricks. And if they approach close to our airlock before dropping their shields, then we can't really deploy the weapons that I've jerryrigged - the cargo bay was the only spot I could really use as a firing bay."

"How about turning the whole premise around?" Lonnie argued. "Instead of trying to hit them when they're not expecting it, make a big show of threatening them with 'the weapon so terrible, we almost dare not use it.' If they're that dumb, they'll be pretty easy to trick. You could even blast an asteroid or something and say that that was using the lowest power setting."

"Hmm... this is what the humans refer to as 'a bluff,' right?" Christin asked after a moment's thought.

"Some of them, yeah."

"Well... just because the Breoll aren't that resourceful, don't think that they're easily bluffed. That sort of thing is definitely part of the way that they act among themselves, as far as I know from my reading." She sighed. "Still - that just might work, I have to admit. Especially since it might be a little bit hard for them to imagine that a bunch of hybrid earthlings and Rahlcix crew would have the _nerve_ to play a bluff on them."

"Oh, if there's one thing we've got plenty of, it's nerve," Michael insisted.

"Yeah," Max agreed. "But if there's anybody who'd know how to play them - well, it's not us, Christin. You? Or would one of the crew have more experience?"

"I think that Variun has been in a few tight spots against the Breoll, back during the days of the Green Willow incident," Christin said. "Couldn't hurt to get his input."

"Hmm... I'll go see if he can make some time for us," Lonnie said, getting up.

"Yeah," Max agreed. "And you can tell us about the Green Willow incident, while we're waiting for him."

"Hmm? Oh, well, I wasn't around for it myself of course, having spent so many years on Earth myself," Christin disclaimed. "But, well... there was this huge row that started when the Breoll delegates to meet with some high Rahlicx official went and cut down a stand of trees in the Autarch's castle grounds that they'd been specifically told that they shouldn't touch. Apparently, to a Breoll's sense of stubbornness, being told not to do something just amounts to a challenge. There were marches and demonstrations in the city squares, some people even saying that they should go to war over the willows."

"Why were the trees so important to the Rahlicx?" Michael asked.

"Well, I'm not quite sure how to explain it to someone who doesn't share that cultural background," Christin admitted. "Having grown up on Rahlicx as an outsider myself, I don't fully understand it either, though I've picked up enough to accept what I don't fully appreciate..."

Captain Variun was indeed free to come and plan strategy with them, since there wasn't much that could be done for planning a new warp space jump until they actually got out of this one. They went over things for about an hour straight, working on the 'script' of their encounter with the Breoll, which seemed to go more like an old choose your own adventure book to Max, except it wouldn't be them making the choices, but the Breoll, since there were a few places where Christin and Variun admitted their enemies might react in a few different ways, depending on the personal quirks of the Breoll captain or anyone else who had input into his decision making process, or what kind of day they were having. Then they broke for natural functions and some quick snacks, and resumed with Liz and Isabel joining in on the project.

"You guys just about finished down there?" Flaii called to them over the intercom.

"Yeah, nearly," Variun replied. "Estimated time to insertion?"

"About three minutes."

"Alright, guess we'd better get up to the cockpit," Variun said, indicating that Christin and Max should accompany him with gestures.

"Places, people," Liz said with a small hopeful smile on her face. "We don't get 'take two' on this one, so nail it."

"Break a leg," Isabel chimed in.

#

"No, Captain Esstriss, I'm serious," Christin said to the short, pugnacious humanoid on the comm screen, genuine expression of panic crossing her face for the first time. "We need your help, and it would be to your benefit to assist us."

"Why would that be?" Esstriss shot back. "You are trying another trick."

"No, no tricks anymore," she insisted. "I'm coming clean with you. There isn't really any such device as the PU-286 explosive space modulator - we were just running some high-intensity power lines around the cargo bay in unusual configurations to make you think that maybe we _did_ have a secret weapon. But when I tried to do a simple plasma ball as a 'demonstration bolt', it drained too much current from our secondary systems and unbalanced the main engines."

"Yes, that much is obvious," another of the Breoll said with considerable delight. "But why is that our concern?"

"One, I think that you're still under orders to capture us alive, if you possibly can," Max put in. "That means that you need to keep us alive if you can - and we won't be alive if our ship blows up. Two - we're carrying enough fuel and exotic explosives now that I think your ship would be damaged too when we go boom."

"Hmm." The captain considered them and seemed to weigh his options - especially the obvious one of just retreating out of the immediate blast range and watching. Finally, though, (perhaps unsure if he could get away with any report to his superior in that case,) he bowed to the inevitable. "But how is your survival to be assured? I will not commit my engineers to repair work on your vessel - that might be a trap."

"You won't have to leave your ship, neither you nor any of your crew, Captain," Variun told his opposite number. "My engineers tell me that a short burst of positrons into our resonance chamber will get the self-repair systems online again. Then we'll surrender to any precautions you consider necessary - once it's safe for both of us."

"Positrons?" More than one of the Breoll asked that question in unison.

"You've got an electrophase-based shielding system, right?" Christin asked. "It's simple - just reverse the polarity on the particle confinement beam and narrow the emitters to target our left flank, close to the stern. And for all the stars _hurry_!"

"Do as she says," Esstriss snapped at his underlings. "If I am risking my life here for these stupid traitors, I do not wish to fail over such an undertaking."

One of the bridge crew started adjusting controls. "These adjustments are not recommended under the safety protocols," the Breoll computer announced. "Unable to proceed without..."

"Oh, what the fark's sake is new," the Breoll first officer, (Max guessed,) snapped. "Nothing's under the safety protocols. Override by my palmprint." And he slapped his hand down on another computer surface.

"Override accepted."

"Alright, positron beam is online," the other officer said. "Beginning infusion... what?" First the main lights on the bridge went off, and then the communication beam itself failed.

"All primary systems on the Breoll ship are down, yes!" Christin remarked, pumping her arm in a very human gesture of self-congratulation. "Including shields, weapons, and all engines." She tapped a few keys. "Launching two TNT rockets, just to make sure that they stay busy until long after we're gone."

"Be careful, Chris," Max muttered. "I'd rather not breach their hull - patching holes and restoring life support when they're already crippled wouldn't be easy."

"I seldom scruple about leaving Breoll to die," Christin shot back, "but maybe that just means I've gotten too caught up in the various wars. As you say, it shall be." Two little spots of yellow light streaked onto the screen and impacted the helpless Breoll ship - no, only one actually made contact, blowing apart a few pieces of the warp engines in the stern. Quite possibly that was an area that hadn't been pressurized with at atmosphere to start with. The other rocket detonated while still seperated from the ship, but close enough that shrapnel peppered the hull, mangling sensor pods and communication arrays, shield emitters, and so on.

"Course laid in and engaging," Flaiisar said, and they turned away from the Breoll ship, accelerating conventionally for about ten seconds before the transition to warp space happened.

"Whew, I'm glad that the 'pretend to be damaged' plot worked, because we didn't really have a backup," Max admitted, leaning back against the cockpit wall. "What if they'd had anybody who knew enough about positrons to know that our explanation of how they could fix our engine trouble was complete and utter bullcrap?"

"Not too likely, with Breoll," Variun put in, chuckling to himself with relief. "I was more worried that they wouldn't be able to figure out how to override their own computer security protocols."

"You guys were all great," Isabel said from outside the doorway. "So, Variun, how long is this jump?"

"Nearly two weeks - I think I outdid myself making it convoluted and unexpected," he said. "And this might cheer you guys up somewhat - now that we're well passed the Breoll, it sort of makes more sense to travel a bit more directly and quickly, instead of wandering around very slowly and through out of the way places, like the original plan was."

"Because going more slowly gives somebody a better chance to lay another trap for us, right?" Max guessed. "We might not catch the next one in time."

"So how long will it take now?" Isabel asked.

"Maybe two months more, can't be quite sure," Variun said. "Now, go on, you kids, get outta here and have some fun."

"Can't argue with that," Max said, and hurried off to look for Liz.


	8. Chapter 8

"Hmm," Michael asked over breakfast the next morning. "Is there a galactic record for most time spent in warp space out of a given period, or something like that?"

"I don't know it offhand, but probably," Jevrok said immediately. "And we're definitely nowhere near it. Offhand, there are courier runs out to Targletaneau and other far-off places where where they probably spend four hundred and ninety-nine days out of five hundred en warp."

"Oh," Michael muttered, seeming disappointed at the idea of not being unique in his suffering.

"Would the computer know?" Maria asked. Jevrok shrugged. "Computer, is there a galactic record for the most time spent in warp space out of a... a subjective Antarian year?"

"That entry does not appear in standardized lists of galactic records," the computer told her. "Attempt wider search of database?"

"Umm - yeah, go right ahead, as long as you've got the processing power," she said. "It's a low priority process. I wouldn't want the ship's systems to dim because you were trying to find this out or anything."

"Acknowledged," the computer replied, and to her surprise came back with a response in just a few more seconds. "In the legends of the Klenthorr people, Arat Selenum and his crew of freedom fighters travelled from Asbelix to the Klenthorr homeworld in a single jump - taking three hundred and seventy two Antarian days. However, this feat is doubted by Rahlicx historian investigators who have studied Selenum's life."

"Pass," Jevrok insisted. "Anything a little bit more reliable?"

"Searching further," the computer replied. Everybody focused on eating, not wanting to start more conversation because of the sense that the computer might interrupt at any moment, perhaps. Kyle came in, and Michael explained briefly what they had told it to look for, and Kyle was drumming his fingers impatiently on one of the rec room tables, wanting to hear some kind of answer himself, once his waffles and tasty low-fat sausage substitute had arrived.

"In the year 4200 BRE by the Antaran Liaretian calendar, a ship from a planet known as Asfer, 1400 light years away in the direction of the galactic core, sent a delegation to the Krevnarr Confederation asking for help with marauding planet pirates who were conducting a campaign of attrition in an attempt to destroy their organized government," the computer replied suddenly around ten minutes after its last report. "According to ship's logs which are generally considered to be reasonably accurate, they logged only zero point three Antarian days out of the four hundred and two day journey in real space, travelling through established and well-mapped trading routes. The Krevnarr council agreed to grant assistance after arguing the case for a fortnight, and the planet pirates were chased over a hundred parsecs, with the last of them blundering to the event horizon of an unmapped black hole."

"Wow, that's quite a story," Michael admitted, smiling slightly. "So, this Krevnarr confederation - any relation to the Krevnarr oligarchy? The one that Sanctuary is on the trade route towards?"

"Umm... same stars and planets roughly, but a different political entity in another era," Jevrok said. "That was 4200 BRE - before the royal era that ruled for four generations or so, until Kivar overthrew it."

"Quite a while," Maria put in.

"Wait a second - four generations?" Kyle interjected. "King Zan would probably be the 'or so' - since he was booted off while still so young."

"Right," Michael put in. "I looked this part up. Sanren was Zan's father, and Sanren's grandfather was invited to take the throne by the provincial assemblies who were in charge back then, because they couldn't form a planetary council that was getting anything done."

"Hmm... okay, I want to learn more about this," Kyle said. "But not really until after I've finished eating."

"Take your time," Maria teased him. "You know, all of us have been learning a lot about Antar and the nearby worlds... the language, the history and culture and so on, but I'm starting to see that there's a lot more to the galaxy than that. It's like Antar and the various colonies and associated worlds are... are just one small to medium sized nation, and the greater galaxy is a whole planet's worth of other countries."

"Definitely an apt comparison," Jevrok admitted. "I can show you the list of known species homeworlds and sovereign interstellar political units in the computer sometime. There's nearly a thousand I think."

"And in that analogy," Michael put in wryly, "Earth is just some backwater island inhabited by 'savages' who don't know anything about the larger world beyond their shores, even their nearest neighbors." Jevrok shrugged at him, (a human mannerism that Maria had taught him just after they left Kaalto,) and didn't say anything.

"Okay, well, we can definitely learn some more," Kyle put in. "That's a good use to put all of this time to... but all school and no fun makes Kyle a grouchy boy. How about starting up another big game deal like the werewolf? I liked the werewolf one, even if I didn't quite make it to the end."

"I wasn't wild about the secret roles part," Maria put in. "Trying to keep secrets from you especially sweetie."

"Yeah, I realized that after," Michael agreed. "Thought it was just homesickness... well, I guess it crossed my mind that maybe you were part of the pack."

"In any event, none of us are really the ones to come up with a game idea and have it work, I think," Jevrok answered. "Though I'd like to play again maybe, and I think that some of the other crew would be interested in joining in this time."

"I'll make a point of finding Alex and seeing what he thinks," Maria said. "Think that the diplomacy negotiations between him and Lonnie broke down, but he was talking about something else - a trading and negotiation game."

"Hmm... sounds interesting," Kyle admitted. "Like stock market stuff, with manipulating the value of various commodities that can be bought and sold?"

"I'm not sure," Maria said.

#

"It's so weird being out of touch for long stretches of time like this," Liz complained quietly, lying in bed next to Max. "I guess I shouldn't make such a fuss over it - there have been times when I've wished for exactly this - to be somewhere that nobody could find us and bother us, no classes full of people watching us or jobs to go to every day, just you and me and our good friends and lots of time to spend together. But - but the reality is quickly palling - not that that's specifically about your company, my prince charming and groom-to-be, of course..." Liz kissed Max's shoulder at this point, and ran her fingers over the pendant that she'd bought him on Kaalto - pretty much the only thing he was wearing at the moment.

"Yeah, I do know what you mean," Max admitted. "Like we're stuck in a black hole - nothing we do or say gets to the outside world. Except that eventually we'll get out, which wouldn't happen if we were really beyond an event horizon."

"Yeah, that's true," Liz admitted. "It can't be like this all the time for warp space, right? I mean - I know that there wasn't much communication gear aboard the Granilith - or at least Michael and Isabel never tried to use it that way. But - but that first ship of Kivar's that showed up to try and trace them... wasn't it warping itself at the time? So it must have not only had warp sensors, but sensors that could work while _they_ were at warp. And if that's possible... then why not some sort of communications device that work while a ship is at warp?"

"Actually, I asked Christin about that, back when we were first exchanging messages with Alinda," Max told her. "The technology does exist - but it's not just because this is a small ship that we don't have it. The principle is known as Interwarp, and after Kivar took power he apparently went to great lengths to sabotage and ruin any decent Interwarp sets in the area that weren't on his own fleet."

"Of course," Liz breathed, seeing it. "Maintaining communications even in the midst of warp transits is a huge tactical advantage, especially if you're the only one who's got that capability. Just how did he manage to keep the loyalists, or Rahlicx, from getting a few sets, or did you not get into that much detail?"

"Didn't really want to know," Max admitted. "I think that there are a few sets that are still out of Kivar's hands, but there's only so much use that they can be put to without risking them... and what they _don't_ have is the expertise to replicate the technology."

"Hmm... maybe something needs to be done about that - though I admit I'm not sure what, offhand." Liz stretched a bit and yawned. "We should really get out of bed, do something a bit more..."

"Active?" Max said with a smile. "I'm starting to feel... very lazy or something like that. We get around a bit, but still, it's not really much - a lot of sitting around eating, playing board games and so on. Probably the only reason that all of us aren't putting on weight is that the food slot creations are relatively low-fat and low-calorie."

"Hmm." Liz considered that and smiled. "Well, there's no reason that the games room has to be just mental games and so on, right? We could probably set it up for... for raquetball or something like that."

"Hmm..." Max considered that silently for a moment. "Well, we'll need something that would be suitable for workout clothes, I guess. Nothing that we've had made up for relaxing or the formal occasions on Kaalto are really good for serious exercise in."

"Hmm, workout clothes?" Liz considered that. "Could work. Something stretchy and showing off a little skin - I certainly won't complain about the view if you don't." She hummed deep in her throat, which Max had learned by this point was a reaction that his true love tended to make when she was considering an arousing thought.

"Who could every complain about someone as pretty to look at as you?" he said sincerely. "Not that I'd really have the nerve to suggest something skimpy - for either of us, really."

"Oh, **sure**."

"Well... not overtly," he qualified. "Okay, some kind of highly active sports. Are we ready to get up and actually do something about that right away?"

"Hmm... no, this is a really good laze and I'm not ready to give it up yet," Liz admitted. "There'll be time." She sighed. "It kinduv seems weird that we're engaged and haven't really said much about our wedding, except for you asking some of the guys about their roles in the party."

"Yeah, well..." Max sighed. "I guess I didn't want you to maybe get your heart set and your hopes up on some really sweet and intimate little deal, if we started talking about that, and then be crushed when we arrive and find out that it's got to be some really huge state affair."

"Oh, some on, Max." She sat up and held both of his hands in hers. "No matter how many other people want to be there around us, even if it's a crowd big enough to annoy me under other circumstances... I - I feel as if nothing really matters except that you and I will be together, and promising to be together forever. If I get a chance to make any decisions, of course I'll have some ideas for what I think are really cool ways to commemorate that day, and so on - but I've never really bought into the idea that a wedding is supposed to be a bride's special day and everything has to be perfect. Not since cousin Laura's wedding in Florida."

"Really?" Max asked.

"Yeah, that kind of gave me a different perspective on things. Weddings are for the guests at least as much as the bride and groom - to give them a sense of participating in the married couple starting out, to feel as if their traditions are being represented at the start of a new family."

"Hmm... yeah, that's probably a good way to look at it, especially in our situation," Max admitted. "There's probably all kinds of Antarian wedding traditions that don't even show up in the computer because nobody's ever bothered to input them."

"And, come to think of it," Liz put in, "If we want a really small and intimate private ceremony, there probably isn't any good reason that we couldn't arrange something like that as well as the big private 'do, right? There might be a bit of a difference of opinion as to which one is the 'real deal', but as long as the legal formalities are signed off on for at least one, it should all be good."

"What made you think of that?" Max asked. "The legal formalities for a pair of wedding ceremonies."

"Oh - some tv show or something I guess. Husband and wife discover eight years later that the 'priest' who officiated at their private elopement the night before the big family wedding wasn't really ordained, and they didn't sign the second marriage licence because they thought they were really married - so after all that time they realize they're not really married."

"Not legally married, maybe," Max put in. "I think I'd make the argument that if they believed they were married and behaved that way with their friends and family, that's the reality, and the other was just a legal mistake."

"I guess so," Liz agreed, half laying back down and pulling Max with her. "So... if you could have a perfect wedding day, what would that mean aside from me being there too?" He chuckled. "That is, if you wouldn't be crushed after getting your hopes up or anything."

"Um, well, let's see." He considered. "It'd start with us waking up seperately, actually, just because I always liked that notion of not seeing you on the wedding day until the ceremony is already in progress and you come down the aisle to join me, or whatever the routine is - it doesn't have to be me waiting and you coming in just because that's the American tradition, just.."

"Yeah, I think I get the idea," Liz said. "Have to admit I'm a bit surprised to hear you say it - always thought that was a foolish superstition or something like that."

"Well, I don't think it'd be bad luck if I saw you earlier on the day or anything," Max argued. "Just - like it would make that moment the more special if I hadn't been around you all day."

"Hmm... okay, yeah, I guess I can get behind that idea," Liz told him. "So what else?"

"Well, let's see." Max thought. "Outdoor ceremony I think if we can manage it... afternoon probably. Someplace with a bunch of flowers and shrubs growing... your turn!"

"Alright," Liz smiled, getting into the spirit of the game. "Music - something classical-ish and very romantic."

"The Romeo and Juliet love theme?" Max suggested, a teasing grin on his face. "The one by Tsiolkovsky, or Tchiaokovsky or whoever it is."

"Maybe better to steer clear of that one," Liz suggested, laughing. "We haven't come this far to risk a tragic ending I think. But I don't have any speciifc suggestions. Doesn't have to be earth music - I'm sure that aliens have something similar. Good classical music is too... too universal for them to have not come up with an equivalent, I think, though I guess I don't have anything to back it up." She sighed. "Okay, that's my turn and back to you."

Max stroked her back idly as he tried to think of something to add.

#

"So, we're coming back out of warp space and can send messages, but there won't be any to receive?" Isabel asked with a sigh. The isolation of the latest trip through hyperspace had definitely been wearing on her. Alex squeezed her hand confortingly.

"Probably not," Christin clarified. "We set up a few possible space-time 'spots' that friends could try to use to communicate with us when we left Kaalto to run the blocade, but none of those really took into account the fact that a Breoll ship would manage to chase us through warp. We're going to sort of end up near one of those spots, but not really close enough that I'd expect to get anything that someone might send. However, the messages that we'll send to Rahlicx and Sanctuary will include a revised itinerary, so that we'll be getting a batch of replies next time."

"Alright," Michael put in. "And - I mean, I know that you're the tactical expert and everything, but there's no way that Kivar's people or the Breoll can find us by intercepting our transmissions, right?"

"Or figure out where Alinda is, and Sanctuary is?" Kyle added on.

"No, not really... it's possible to find a tachyonic communication beam if you know where it's starting and where it's going to, though that's not easy. Finding one without having those co-ordinates already - it would be like sticking your hand into the ocean on Earth and happening to grab - a tuna." Someone snickered at the completion of that analogy. "Well, you get the idea," Christin said, sighing.

"Yeah, I guess I do," Alex said, and sighed. "One thing that I don't remember coming up, Christin - once we get to Sanctuary, what are **you** going to do? Stay with this ship as it goes on more courier runs, working communications and tactics?"

"I'm not too sure, to be honest." Christin didn't sound too concerned with that subject. "I'm an officer in the service of Rahlicx, as I was on Earth and long before I arrived there. Larek or one of his appointed deputies will have other duties to assign to me, I suspect."

"Did you have anything to do with Brody?" Michael suddenly blurted out. "I mean, with his original 'abduction' I mean?"

"I was wondering if you'd guess that," Christin said, turning to shoot an intense look over at him. "Yes, I arranged the 'abduction' and prepared him to serve as a proxy for Larek on Earth."

"And cured his cancer," Isabel filled in.

"Yes. I actually offered him a choice, though I had to repress that memory. Not a bargain - having gone that far, I'd have saved his life anyway. But I asked him to volunteer for service in exchange."

"Well, that's nice I guess," Kyle put in. "A bit hard on the guy that he couldn't remember that he signed up for the deal." Christin nodded in agreement.

"I have so many questions, if you don't mind, actually," Alex admitted. "What was your life like before coming to Earth? How much did you know when you were sent there?"

"Hmm, well, now that's a story." Christin sipped from a glass that had fake fresh-squeezed lemon juice in it. "But I don't mind telling some of it, I guess. Let's see... I was brought up in a genetic breeding and training facility on an island-continent near Rahlicx' Antarctic circle." She looked around, and must have caught a disapproving expression on Isabel's face. "It was sort of impersonal, but not a horrible place by any means. I was raised to believe in the importance of a life of public service."

"Not that you really had much of a choice about entering that life," Kyle put in, and Christin nodded agreeably.

"I was working with the Marine guard on Tsiarea when the news broke about the final fall of the House of Liaret - or so it seemed at that time. That Zan and Vilandra had been killed, Kivar Andraikus was giving orders, and Alinda and her only surviving children gone into hiding." She sighed. "Tsiarea is a water world, with islands settled by both Rahlicx and Breoll, because some of the native aquatic life forms have valuable bio-properties that can't be artificially recreated. The marine guard was kepy busy trying to protect fishing ships from pirates and so on."

"But you were recalled from sailing duty there to go off to Earth," Michael guessed.

"Yeah - but not right away. At first I thought that I'd be pulled out right away for space duty or some such - it was plain that Kivar wouldn't be satisfied with just the Antarian homeworld, and even after some of the Antarian space fleet fought Kivar in Zan's name or simply deserted to guard the old royal family, what he had left was more than any of the other major planets had to defend themselves. But although there were transfers out of the 'wet place', I wasn't among them. Kivar didn't launch any more full-scale wars, choosing to consolidate his own security and try to forment dissension among the neighbors instead."

"Which worked too well," Max put in, starting some of the listeners, and sitting down in the lounge, along with Liz. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt - just remember how much mutual distrust there was back at the Summit."

"Well, there was some friction even at the best of times," Christin added. "I'm not sure if there's ever been complete peace between the five worlds, but anyway. At this time, the existence of the hybrid rebirth project was being kept secret by the old Queen and her closest supporters. I think that the original idea was to wait until you were completely 'safe' and then to announce some details to the people - not even mentioning planet Earth - so that in their minds the old royal family would never die out. Obviously the crash and events following it upset their plans..."

"And then the whole kerfuffle about Vilandra's pod," Kyle added.

"Yeah, but that was later, after I got to Earth," she said. "I was picked by Rahlicx to be reinforcement protectors for you - because only one had survived the crash and escaped the humans."

"Does that explain the numbers?" Isabel asked suddenly, excited. "Two protectors survived the crash - they stole the pods, with Hal Carver's help..."

"_Who_?" Christin asked, surprised.

"An air force captain who'd been drummed out for asking too many questions about the crash," Michael said. "He snuck into the building where the pods were being held to find out what the big secret was - and realized that the Protectors weren't trying to hurt anybody, just get back their own." He sighed. "They - or he, the surving one - he never mentioned a human's help to you, did he?"

"No, not really," Christin admitted. "Go on with your reconstruction, Isabel."

"Well... the two of them got the pods somewhere reasonably safe - probably not our pod chamber or anything, because then they could have stayed inside secure themselves. They got captured... maybe gave themselves up to save the pods. And one of them died under the military's hospitality."

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," Christin admitted. "We had to help the other one break out to find out where you'd been hidden... not that we wouldn't have wanted to see him free anyway."

Just then everybody could feel the ship crossing back into real space. "Oooh!" Christin jumped up, called up a computer interface on the rec room wall and started dispatching outgoing messages. It took a few minutes to organize them, but when all of them had been sent, Variun and Flaii still weren't ready to jump into warpspace again.

"Well, we've got a bit of time to play with, and we're using it," Varium said when Max questioned him about the delay. "We can come up with a warp trajectory that will take us further, and one that's not so terribly long, so that we can get a return message for you guys earlier, but only if you don't pester."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to..." Max started, and then just shut off the intercom rather than bother the captain any longer as he was trying to use the computer. "Alright."

"Wait a second," Michael asked. "If they haven't finished calculating our jump, then how will Alinda know where to find us next time?"

"I'll reopen the communication arrays and send our final co-ordinates before we go back into warp," Christin explained.

"Okay, yeah, that should do it," Isabel agreed. "Any idea how long they'll take?"

"Probably an hour and a half at the most," she said. "Any more, and the net might pick up traces of our stopping here."

"Okay, well, if you're not going to start your story again, then I'm going to go find Alex," Isabel said. And without really waiting for Christin to respond first, she walked out of the room, but slowly.

#

"Okay, the trading bell will be rung in about one minute," Max announced loudly enough for his voice to carry out of the gaming room. "No trades are final until all parties involved have confirmed their gains and liabilities through the computer. Anyone who wants to attempt to move the hidden levers of the economy, pass me a folded paper with your handwritten plays."

"So everybody knows who's submitted a lever play?" Maria put in.

"There's no penalty for handing you a blank paper, if we want to give a false impression that we're manipulating, right?" Rath added.

"Correct on both counts," Max agreed. "Actually, if you really want to find some way to get your plays to me without other people figuring it out, go right ahead - but _no_ using the computer for that - anything else goes." There were a few rueful groans at that restriction. "Any other questions before we start? Hopefully quick ones?"

"What about teaming up?" Ava asked.

"Mergers can be logged in the computer just like most other deals, and like anything else that involves future liabilities they should involve escape clauses for what should happen if one or another participant wants to withdraw from the partnership," Max said. "The negotiations may well get... interesting..." And with that, he hit a contact and rang the starting bell. "Go to it. I'll be available for more questions, but those who want to dive right in can do so now." There was quickly a flurry of shouting as all the players, (which was everybody but Max and Flaii this time,) started to ask each other what their available assets for trading were, began to negotiate deals, and at the same time started going over the secret information that they had been issued and the general market guidelines that everybody had available to them.

"Sorry if I'm sounding thick about this," Jevrok was asking Max after the first crazy fifteen minutes had gone by. "What would a general partnership deal look like, just for example? I'd rather know before actually trying to find someone who wants to join forces."

"There are a couple of different examples I could give," Max answered, loud enough that a few other players waiting around near him (to pick up any tips they could) would hear. "Probably the easiest is - hypothetically, if you and... and Isabel, say, wanted to join forces, you'd create a dummy corporation, sign over all of your assets and rights to the corporation - call it 'team JI.' Credit for any JI victory would be split 50-50 between the two of you, and credit for any solo victory would pass to the corporation to be split up - not that you'd be likely to find any way to retain individual standings after giving up all that you individually own." Isabel nodded agreement to this. "Each of you would be entitled to do business as an officer of the company, except that you can stop each other's trades if you wish - in the case of a strategic deadlock under those particular restrictions, nothing would be done until you could come to an agreement and work together."

"Alright, I think that covers that much," Jevrok agreed. "And withdrawal clauses?"

"I... I think I'll let you guys figure those out yourselves for now," Max put in. "Oh, just a sec." Alex and Maria were getting into a bit of a shouting match over a trading screen, and he went to see if there was anything that he could smoothly mediate without overstepping his bounds as master of ceremonies.

#

"Tess has had the baby!" The announcement startled them all, especially the way that Alinda led with it in their very first real-time conversational communique, but Isabel supposed that it sortof was big news. "A boy, but then you knew that, Max. Quite adorable actually."

"That, umm... that's great news, actually," Liz said. "Hello Alinda, and nice to 'meet' you." She paused. "About the child - is he alright? Healthy, I mean?"

There was a long pause while they waited for that much signal to reach to Alinda and back. Both sides were sending 'video letters' back and forth in the background to cover more details, but nobody was concentrating on this now that a live line was being left open. "The baby is... under medical observation, and the Healers are planning to do an intervention once he's strong enough to handle the connection." Max gasped at this news about his son. "One lung isn't operating properly, and that's about as much as they've been able to get me to understand, as much as they try to explain. But **don't** worry Max - everybody seems to be very optimistic that once they can get this fixed he'll be fine and will live a long and happy life." There was a pause. "I didn't want to tell you about this earlier, but we weren't sure if the baby would have futher troubles because of being a second-generation hybrid and getting recessive DNA from you and Tess - not family-recessive DNA, just - well, maybe I shouldn't have brought it up now, because there don't seem to be any difficulties along those lines."

"Alright," Max said. "I... I'm glad that she had the baby more or less on schedule, and that both son and... Tess is doing alright herself, yes? You'd have told me if she weren't." He sighed. "It's sort of weird to actually be 'talking' to you like this, but a good sort of weird."

"Yes, I do know what you mean - you're someone who has only existed in my life more distantly - vague messages, reports, and more recently video letters. A transmission delay this long isn't as good as being in the same room as you, certainly, but it's much of an improvement. Yes, Tess is doing fine, and since she's been behaving well we've been allowing her to visit her baby." There was a pause. "Do you have any ideas for names, Max? I don't think it's my place to pick one, and Tess has been reluctant on that score herself, but a child needs a name of his own, especially going through such trying circumstances."

Max and Liz traded uncomfortable looks. "Encourage Tess to pick one, even if it turns out to only be temporary," Liz suggested. "I don't think that either of us could settle on one at such long distance - we haven't even seen him yet, though you had better be sending us baby pictures, videos, or both."

"Oh, it's included in the stream, don't worry," Alinda inisted after the usual gap. "So, I believe that it's seven weeks until you're supposed to arrive? Things should be ready for all of you here, well, at least for trials at least - probably many things will have to be altered, but I've made some arrangements for all ten of you based on the preferences that you indicated." Liz jumped slightly, not having realized that all of them had had something to say to Alinda in terms of living arrangements or other preparations for their arrival, though it made sense that the subject would have been on the minds of each of them, especially back before Kaalto. "Christin has sent me debriefs on your experiences with the blocade and the pursuit - it sounds frightful, and I'm glad that you were able to find some way to win free. Don't know what I would have done if you'd all been taken by... by those..."

"Okay, come on, we should start talking about something else," Isabel suggested, talking over a bit more muttering and mumbling from Alinda, but she trailed off long before the interruption would have reached her. "We don't have too long before the line has to get closed down - but I'm not sure what to ask about, actually..."

"How's Rayde doing?" Max suggested. "Any news from the Kivar front?"

"Rayde is well, thank you, and sends her apologies that she had a meeting and couldn't join in on this call," Alinda said eventually. "Kivar has definitely left Earth and is either back on Antar or close to it, and more than a little furious that he didn't manage to achieve anything substantial on his fishing expedition. Frankly, it seems to have worked out fairly well for us - his usual power base is starting to show strains and cracks, mostly on the basis of recent failures, several of which have involved you, Max."

"Maybe, just maybe... a bold show of force and resolve would be all that's necessary for that house of cards to come crashing down around him?" Alex suggested suddenly. "Like..."

"...however, the news is not all good... a sympathizer base in the Carathian hills, not far from the Antarian capitol, was found out by Kivar's army and most of the inhabitants shot dead on the spot," Alinda continued on more soberly. "We're investigating to see how their presence might have been compromised, but it's disappointing and not just because so many people continue to die in the fighting. They'd hoped to... what was that? Alex?"

"Um - I'm not sure of all the details honestly," Alex said, after hesitating a few moments himself. "Just - if a number of people landed on Antar at the same time - Rahlicx and Liaretians and maybe even other people who want to get rid of Kivar and everybody who's working for him... we just might be able to start a panic and prevent a bloodier war or a protracted standoff."

"Hmm... it sounds risky, and I'm not sure that I'd want it tried before every aspect of the situation gets examined," Alinda muttered, "but it won't be really my decision that is final. I'm sure that Rayde and several other people will be interested in hearing any perspectives that you have, even if you haven't been directly involved into the struggle up to this point. You're coming at this thing fresh, after all, and will have experience with modes of thought from Earth that maybe none of us are used to. Perhaps even Larek will..."

"Uh-oh, that's the warning that we should say our goodbyes and cut the beam," Liz said, pointing to a bright red spot pulsing in the bottom corner of the screen. "Until next time, Alinda, thanks for everything that you've sent us, we'll go through it in detail during the next hop, and I hope thay you appreciate some of our own letters and videos."

"I'm sure that I will, dear," Alinda said. "Hope that you remembered to include more about that book you were telling me of last time. Yes, yes, I'm getting off the line now..."

"_Bye_!" Isabel called out, but it was far from clear if Alinda would hear it as her image winked out. "Darnit, couldn't we have gotten just one minute more?"

"Sure, if you want the star cruiser two parsecs away to know that we were here," Christin called over the intercom - which Isabel hadn't realized was even on. "Return to warp space won't be for ten minutes or so, but I don't think that you should try initiating any other signals either. I'm trying very hard to disguise our traffic for a few quick messages to Rahlicx."

"Alright," Max said, and started going into the computer for Alinda's 'data stream.' "Okay, do we all want to look at the baby videos?"

"Is there going to be, like, delivery room footage?" Kyle put in. "Because on the one hand - gross, but I dunno, it might help to see her going through some pain."

"Wait a second," Liz put in, struck by the thought. "That sort of healer painless birth technique - would they use it on Tess?" She did seem almost disappointed by the thought herself.

"I'm not sure, but I suspect so, at least partly," Max admitted. "They probably think that it's better for the kid too."

"Oh, alright." Liz sighed. "Well, let's take a look at least. I mean, it's all over by now right?"

As it turned out, there was no video of the actual labour process one way or another for them to judge on, although there were a few quick scenes of Tess being rushed to the appropriate care facility when it was clear that her 'time' was near. Then the scene switched almost immediately to the newborn child himself, lying in a sort of miniature bed, being held by an Antarian nurse... being attended to by gowned professionals, and eventually put into a glass box very similar to the ones that showed up on Earth medical shows about preemie babies, even though nobody had said that was part of the problem here. There was even a breathing ventilator apparatus.

"I... I didn't realize that it was so bad," Isabel gasped.

"It looks a bit scary, but I think I believe what Alinda said," Max put in. "He's going to be okay. And I think that he does look good, even if they're taking a lot of precautions."

"He seemed really pale," Alex said after a moment. "Like, not quite really white, but - are babies usually that pale?"

"I'm not sure, but I wouldn't worry about it too much," Isabel put in. "Tess was pretty lily-colored herself, and I think I saw something in one of the Antarian computer files - there are Antarians whose skin color is nearly white..."

"Along with just about every other shade under the rainbow," Kyle put in.

Isabel didn't acknowledge that comment. "...so it could be part of your and Tess' alien sides coming out in the kid."

"Hey, there's something in here that says 'concerning Earth!'" Liz interrupted, which pretty much got everybody's attention. She picked the appropriate entry, and the paused still-frame of the health facility room was replaced by a picture of an Antarian man.

"Hello, Max, Isabel, Michael. Lady Rayde has asked me to report to you about events on Earth since you left. My name is Turik Vannler: seneschal of Prince Vorjal, the eldest son of princess Kahvai, daughter of her lady emeritus, Queen Alinda." Turik was a striking figure, with dark greenish skin, short dark brown hair of a shade that managed to blend in, and bright purple-blue eyes. "Our reports are of necessity somewhat out of date, considering the transmission delays in communications being routed through many different worlds, but I hope that the results will be reassuring to you."

"Oh!" Isabel instantly picked up on the world 'reassuring' and hugged Alex's side tightly.

"Kivar's force has withdrawn from the Earth solar system almost entirely - there might be one individual left behind, we can't be certain of that, but if so he has done nothing of consequence yet. All the individuals who we could think to check upon - your adoptive parents the Evanses, the families of your friends, the Parkers, Whitmans, the DeLucas and James Valenti, Brody Davis, and Laurie Dupree, all of these people are safe and in reasonably good health. I believe that there was a... 'a touch of the flu' passing through Roswell as the heat of the summer first faded."

"Our remaining agents on Earth will continue to watch over these people in case of some subtle alien threat or ploy, but the precaution is probably not necessary. As a final note, Max, I will need to mention that it appears your adoptive parents have been apprised of the secret of your origins by J Valenti. This concludes my report."

"What?" Max exclaimed as the image faded out. "Yeah, just drop a bomb like that on me and don't... sheesh, okay, I'm going to have one heck of a followup letter ready for seneschal Turik Vannler by the time we're through our next warp..."

"Don't be too hard on him, Max," Liz suggested. "I have questions too - about how they took it, if my parents or Alex's know too. I always sort of wondered what Jim and Amy would say to our folks once they got home and we didn't. Now I guess we have some idea. But it was probably a freak chance that alien spies figured out anything about that sort of thing. And they can't endanger their cover identities by nosing around too closely."

"Maybe they don't need to nose around and spy," Isabel suggested. "If we could give them some way to approach Valenti and have him believe that they're friends, then maybe they can get the full update straight from him."

"It's an idea worth thinking about," Alex admitted. "But not quite yet. Is there anything else from Alinda in the batch? I mean, directly from her?"

"Tons," Max reported. "Whatcha wanna see first?"


	9. Chapter 9

Ship's personal log.

Hi, Alex here again. Haven't made an entry in a long time, and it's not because of not really having time or anything - time is still in fairly good supply around this ship. (The name 'Van Allen' never really caught on for it, huh? Everybody just calls it 'the ship' or 'the spaceship.' Well, that's not really a big deal is it?) I guess I just got out the habit somewhere around Kaalto and the Breoll. But I've got some news, so figured it made some sense to call up the file and dictate some more.

First thing - we're all just back from a Gevinan deep space station, which was a nice break from the company of the crew and the cramped conditions of the ship, but it was kind of weird too. Everybody had to get disguised, because there might have been Kivar or Breoll spies around, and obviously it wouldn't do to have anybody like that recognize us. Oddly enough, the inside of the station did remind me a bit of 'deep space nine', even though it was bigger and more open inside. Even though they have artificial gravity, most of the station was spinning for rotational g, because that's cheaper and overall less likely to break down, even when you count in the possibility of pieces breaking off and shooting into space and relatively high speeds. But there were the busy marketplaces full of aliens, and a kind of a coffee shop-restaurant where we managed to get some decent Antarian grub. (Isabel's been insisting on trying more Antarian recipes from the food slot, saying that it's high time we got to the cuisine that'll be usual on Sanctuary, instead of sticking with human recipes. Some of them are really very tasty, even though a lot of it is more 'hot and spicy' than I'd go for. Isabel never minds the hot stuff of course.)

And let's see... there was a roofed-over park with an artifical 'sun' shining down on it all the time, which was a lot of fun to visit, and we talked with a few of the locals and other travellers passing through - carefully. Variun and some of the rest of the crew had spare parts to buy and the ship was brought into a repair bay for some work on the warp manifold compressor. We didn't spend that long at the station though - maybe eleven hours, and then it was time to head off again. I would have liked to try spending the night over there, but didn't want to get into arguing the security and schedule issues, especially when Max and Isabel seemed just as happy to head off when we did.

We're only a few more jumps from Sanctuary now, which surprised me when Maria pointed it out - two months and more have passed since we first left Earth, and I'm surprised by how quickly it's gone by. Our most recent ETA is just under nineteen more days, and it seems hard to get my head around the idea that this new life we're supposed to be preparing for will start that soon. Well, there's no sense in panicking about it, after all, and from what I've heard of Alinda, she's going to do everything that she can to ease us into things gently.

The stock market game is _still_ going strong - Max structured it so that it can pretty much keep on indefinitely as long as there's still interest in making trades and activity on the hidden levers of the economy. Things have polarized considerably into teams, with four main power blocks - Isabel Christin and I, Michael Maria Jevrok and Liz, Rath Ava and Kyle, and the rest - which includes Lonnie as well as two of the crew. Something about the way these alliances generally developed in terms of natural affinities instead of based on the random chances of assets and monopolies is intriguing, but maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. There was one big reshuffling fairly late in the game, with Liz backing out of an alliance with the captain and needing to get extra funding from Maria to pay the penalty fees that she needed to take her big properties with her. I think that the big finale is probably going to be in just a few days more, and our team has a relatively decent chance as long as the metals exchange doesn't turn against our iridium holdings.

Okay, that's enough to say for now I think. I've been wondering if there was any way that I could get this log and a few other descriptions of my trip sent back to my parents in Roswell, but that's probably asking for trouble at the moment. I'll keep thinking about the idea though.

#

"So, any idea what you are going to do with yourself when we get there?" Maria asked Lonnie, not without a certain needling tone in her voice, as they both got ready for sleep.

"Not especially, figured I'd see what the welcome wagon was like first," Lonnie admitted a bit grumpily. "Maybe move in with Tess - that'd be interesting to say the least." She sighed. "Never figured I'd have so much in common with the girl."

"Hmm... I'm not sure that would be a good idea for either of you in the long run," Maria admitted. "But it's not my call."

"You could be right though." Lonnie stretched lithely and then turned her covers down. "At least Alinda seems to not have a problem with me. Suspect that she could never really hold a grudge against family. And Rayde seems to be cool too, some of the other people in the rebel army. Maybe I'll be able to find a place to do some good with the forces."

"Oh great," Maria said as she slipped into bed herself. "Just think about Kyle's feelings before you go in for suicide duty, okay?"

"Kyle, really?" Lonnie made a face. "I... I kinda thought that nothing was going on with us. That 'feelings', certainly, weren't part of the deal. Kyle and I have fun together, but..."

"He's confused," Maria put in softly. "And the few messages he's been able to exchange with Tess haven't made things any easier on him."

"Hmm." Lonnie considered. "Maybe I'd better settle the score sooner rather than later." Maria tried to interrupt, but Lonnie talked over her. "Now, I realize what you're trying to do, but let me handle this my way, okay?"

"Umm - okay, yeah, I guess," Maria muttered, just wanting to finish the conversation at that point. "Good night."

#

"Wow, Alinda really outdid herself in arranging this," Liz said, skipping onto the next of a series of files that had been sent to them regarding possible accomodations in Landorin city. "All the video, the virtual room simulations, all of the details about available amenities... there's a lot to try and sort through, but it's great. I feel as if we were already there and apartment shopping."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Max said, smiling over at her and then returning his eyes to the video. "Oooh, nice view there."

"It's alright," Liz admitted. "I'm almost at the point where I'd appreciate a view that's not a view of hills, but probably we won't have much option there."

"Not unless 'urban hills' count under a different category," Max admitted. "Do you think we could really use this much space?"

"Probably... I mean, it looks really stark when there's not much furniture around like so, but it wouldn't be hard to remedy that. It's not really much bigger than the apartment above the Crashdown, according to the floor space listed."

"Hmm... you have that number memorized for your old home?" Max asked, hugging her.

"I constantly surprise myself with what I remember about Roswell," she admitted. "Okay... yeah, this one is pretty good - nice layout, good flow of the rooms together I think - but I would appreciate a view that's of the city as opposed to the countryside I think... or at least, that's what I think now. Later on, who's to say, but..."

"Well, we certainly don't need to come to a decision just this moment," Max put in. "I wanted both of us to go through a bunch of stuff this afternoon, but that was mostly just so it could settle in and work through our subconscious or something like that."

"Ahh, I never really seem to do well with that," Liz told him. "If there's a decision to be made, I tend to keep attacking it with logic until I've settled on an answer."

"Hmm... yeah, come to think of it, that does sound like you," he admitted. "Well... if you just pick one and say that you've settled on it, does it keep you from changing your mind later." She shook her head. "Then that would be a way to keep attacking the decision I guess."

"Well - I'm not sure if that would really work, but it's something to try I admit." She laughed softly. "I keep thinking about my parents, ever since that Turik guy mentioned them in his message. Even if they do know something about where I've gone and why... I still have so many questions. How much they miss me. If they're angry with me, or blame themselves for 'driving me away' or something. If they're panicking about the thought of having an alien pseudo-royalty for a potential son-in-law." And she kissed him on the neck to punctuate that last thought.

"Well... even if we've been hard to seperate all summer, I doubt that they'd immediately think of marriage between us, based on what Jim and Amy would tell them," Max pointed out. "I didn't say anything about marrying you until after they'd left, remember."

"Yeah, I do know that, just... well, I'm not sure if that makes it better. Whatever the facts about marriage or what have you, I've left everything I know behind and gone to some alien place because of you, Max. I... I never doubt that I made the right decision - but it seems pretty likely that they won't understand."

"So I guess they don't understand," Max agreed. "We'll do what we can to get back home and explain to them, if we can... but-"

"But that's a long time in the future, and we need to start thinking about our life in the shorter term," Liz explained. "Okay... next place?"

"No, actually... talking about planning our lives, I'd like to bring up another aspect of it." Max grinned and switched files. "Now, Alinda and Rayde had some understandable security concerns with the idea of getting married in the park. The same ones we mentioned, actually... no matter how well they try to do crowd control, all it takes is one nutcase or determined enemy agent hiding in a tree or a building to go sniper on us with alien powers, and the wedding day could turn into a tragedy." Liz nodded somberly. "So they presented two counteroptions, with security the prime criterion. The indoor pictures are of a ceremony and meeting hall in the heart of the Sanctuary neighborhood. Very convenient for all sorts of supporters and wellwishers who might want to attend. And then..."

"These outdoor pictures are so lovely," Liz admitted. "Probably way out of town, judging by the terrain, but..."

"Yeah, it's a wetlands retreat owned by a big shipping magnate who's one of the rebellion's biggest supporters," Max put in. "Nearly an hour's flight away by aircar, but between the remoteness and Jalor's usual fences and guards, there's no chances of anyone we don't specifically invite showing up."

"Not even landing in a spaceship inside all the fences?" she teased.

"I'm sure he knows how to block off that sort of entry too. So they're willing to back that option if we want it - it'd be outdoors, and a smaller ceremony than one held in or around Landorin city. Alinda mentioned that the site should be even prettier if we wait for the warmer weather."

"Ahh, right," Liz said. "I did wonder if those puddles were frozen over." Max nodded agreement. "Umm - is there an Antarian custom on wedding receptions or feasts? We could compromise, have the ceremony out at chez Jalor, and then the reception back in town and the ceremony hall, so all the well-wishers can do what they want to."

"Hmm... yeah, that's probably a really good compromise," Max admitted. "Sounds great. And I know that Jevrok's been working with you girls on dresses - he showed us what the standard formal wear is like for men, and it seems... no less ridiculous than some tuxedos that I've seen."

"Yep. Remember, no poking around in the computer looking for pics of my wedding dress or anything," Liz teased. "Well, if we're not looking at any more places to live now, then I want something to eat."

"Let's have lunch inside," Max suggested, squeezing her shoulder gently. "Order me some of that porridgey stuff."

"Oh, the vannalar?" Liz asked, heading over to the food slot. "Sure. I'll get a Darvanakan, if we're eating Antarian today." That was a sort of traditional sandwich, using triangular bread, which Liz had started to develop a taste for.

#

"Hello, General Abakar," Ava said into the red recording spot on the wall, sitting next to Rath on their bed. "Just wanted to send this out as a statement of intent that we'd be happy to join up with your unit, and understand all the conditions you laid out in your last message - well most of them at least, enough to be getting on with."

"Things will probably be pretty confused for a working sequence or more after we land at Sanctuary," Rath put in. That was the local equivalent to a week, eight solar days on Landorin, which was less than seven and a half earth twenty-four hour days. "But I imagine that it shouldn't be too long before the details can be worked out. We may not have too much in terms of formal training, but the sort of experience that we had on Earth should be very valluable for covert ops in the Antar cluster." He turned to look at Ava. "Anything else that you think we need to add?"

"Not really... situation kind of speaks for itself," she admitted. "See you soon. Computer, end of recording."

"Confirmed - please specify filename to save."

"Ava and Rath, letter to Liaret covert ops three," Rath recited, sounding a bit bored, and the computer chirped as it completed the save operation. "Okay, so that's done and over with. What now?" he asked Ava.

"I... am not sure," she admitted softly, and leaned back against him. One of Rath's heands started to caress her hair, and he bent down to place a kiss on her smooth neck. "Well, yeah, there's always that I guess, but..."

"You're not in the mood?" Rath asked playfully.

"It's not about the mood, but maybe the moment..." Ava started, and then relaxed noticeably as someone signalled on their door. "Um, what is it?"

"Come on, team Cornwall!" Kyle exclaimed back. "Sudden death finale."

"Ooh, okay." Ava got up, turned around to smile brightly at Rath. "I've got a good feeling about this."

"Yeah," Rath grumped. But he got up too, and changed his shirt before leaving their room, which meant that there wasn't enough standing space in the games room and they had to 'overflow' into the rec room, with a little closed-circuit picture of Max managing the denouement, along with a return video link in case any of them needed to make a reply that would be heard by everybody.

"Okay, let's see," Max said. "First of all, in the continuing cycle of consolidation, the levers of the economy have spoken, and the West Province Securities exchange has been forced to liquidate. Everybody who has holdings there gets... only twenty-five Ents on the Ando." There was a lot of groaning and sputtering about that, especially from Alex and Isabel's team, who had invested heavingly in in Western Woods Insurance and several other companies on that exchange."

"Okay, so what happens next?" Lonnie asked eagerly. Her 'outsiders' team had stayed largely clear of West side and so was well positioned now.

"Now it's time for a power play," Max put in. "Three crucial regulatory questions will affect the final leveraging formula which determine the ultimate winner of the game. The information on those questions will be made available to all players and teams in a moment. They'll be settled by the appropriate voting methods, in order, and before and after each one there'll be a five to ten minute blitz window for trading. Then the winners will be announced."

"Oh, boy," Ava muttered. How long was this going to take? There was probably nothing important that anybody had to do for hours at least.

"I think one of us needs to get in there with the others," Rath put in,. "Or else we get locked out of the blitz trading, practically."

"Not yet, bud," Ava countered. "We got handed a great opporunity to plan strategy without anybody else paying attention to us. I don't want to throw that away until we've seen the regulatories and talked them through."

"Alright," Rath muttered after a moment, and Kyle nodded his agreement. Just then the new heading appeared under the game section of the computer files, where Ava was monitoring them.

"Blitz trading starts now, and the first regulatory gets settled in ten minutes," Max called out.

"Okay, let's see," Kyle put in. "The first one falls down on Macrodynamics industries - well, at least nobody's been able to monopolize _them_ so far... but we don't hold much common stock. Second issue will be chosen by a virtual town hall, so everybody has an equal vote, plus one for each corporation where we have a majority or hugely controlling interest." He sighed. "We're not doing too badly there. And the third will be settled by an associational meeting for all solvent member companies of the association of lumitronics manufacturers... hey - that one's nearly a lock for us!"

"Yeah," Ava agred, seeing it. "Between our controlling interest in Gadgeterama and sixty-five percent of the Fiberglass ridge co-operative, we've got nearly as much voting stock as the other threee teams put together."

"But it's not just the playing teams who count," Michael put in. "There are breakdowns of how the various companies beyond all of our control are expected to go."

""Yeah, but still, it's better than not having enough leverage of our own," Kyle put in. "Okay, So what are the actual issues being voited on, and how do they affect our holdings?"

"Yeah, double-time it Ava," Rath suggested. "Arynda holdings is trying to make some deals."

"Well, they got a lot of free cash from that liquidation," Kyle replied, as Ava started to speed-read through the details and correlate them with the team portfolio. She'd always been good at absorbing a lot of information and figuring out what the implications of it was, but right now the way Rath was taking her gift for granted chafed a bit.

"Okay, just figures," she muttered. "Question three, the one that we've got a lot of leverage over, doesn't really impact us much, it mostly impacts Liz's team - they want a 'yes' vote that will let them get the most bang out of their mineral holdings. And conversely, the regulatory that's most important to us is the first one, that we can't control much, and they can - which could hit us hard in the small-caps or not so much."

"So, either we try to cut a deal or we each torpedo the other," Rath boiled down. "What's the impact of the torpedos?"

"Not sure," Ava admitted. "If we don't, then we're both in the lead, running neck and neck. If we do each take the low road, then the outsiders are probably ahead of both of us."

"So we need to deal," Kyle put in. "Can you convince Liz of that in... five or six minutes?"

"She'll have seen the point," Ava put in. "But they'd have to give us what we want first... and I'm not sure they'll trust that we'll follow through on the deal."

"Isn't there a way to put the deal into the computer so that it's enforced?" Rath suggested.

"Yeah - but in five minutes?" Ava asked. But she turned to head into the games room, and saw Liz coming towards her. "I guess I know what you're here for."

"Yep," Liz agreed. "Don't mind Lonnie - she's just here to sow trouble."

"And she's **so** good at it," Ava teased, hoping that taking the initiative could keep Lonnie from actually saying too much of anything. "Okay, we want you to vote towards liberal small-cap quantification at Macrodynamics, and you want us to put our lumitronic holdings behind the mineral holdings. Can we deal on those terms?"

"Yeah, I think so," Liz agreed. "If we fail to vote your way at the start, then you get half of the minerals we have and are freed of the deal to vote how you wish. If you renege in your turn, then we get all of your listed small-cap stock and control over Gadgetrama."

"Whew," Rath muttered. The terms of forfeiting were high, but they made sense in this situation.

"Don't listen to her, girl," Lonnie said to Ava. "She just wants to find some way to force you into defaulting, and then... _mmph_!"

Ava had to just stand there and stare for a moment. Exactly what had gone through Kyle's head she wasn't sure, but he had shut Lonnie up by one of the most direct methods possible - planting a kiss right on her lips. (It was a position that oddly underscored that she was taller than he was, as he had to lean up and pull her head down a bit to make contact.) Liz snickered and led Ava over to enter the terms of their deal into the computer, and then left to tell her teammates of the results of the negotiation.

"I've done a few quick calculations," Michael muttered after she left. "Tallmart may be the tiebreaker. Think we could get Alex to trade us ten thousand there, in exchange for the Northern gas and oil? I know that fossil fuels aren't a valuable source of energy in this game, but they've still got specialized uses."

"Well, I'll see," Ava said with a smile. "In fact, we should probably double-team him."

#

After an hour and a half, Ava Rath and Kyle were announced the winners, and just as Michael had said, it was a twenty-percent share in Tallmart that put them over the top. Most of the gang joined them for a celebratory dinner in the rec room, and with the stock game behind them, talk quickly turned to what they could expect with the landing at Sanctuary drawing nearer and nearer.

"One thing that I'm still not quite clear on, Evans," Kyle said after cutting into his calzone, "when we get there, are you going to be really no-kidding-around King of the underground movement or whatever?"

"No, not at first, and possibly not ever." Max held Liz close to him. "We've talked it over - I don't want to be King, Liz doesn't really want to be Queen, and Vorjal, the Prince who's been acting head of the Liarets for the past ten years or so doesn't really want me taking over until I know a lot more about what's going on at least."

"Vorjal - he's Turik's boss, right?" Maria put in. "The one who told us the news about our family back home?"

"Yeah," Liz agreed. "And Alinda doesn't really seem to care that much one way or another. So... we kind of brainstormed for loopholes, and found a doozy. Because there's nothing in the precedents about being cloned from a reigning King's DNA and essence, mixed with a genetic sample from some human kid - as far as the succession is concerned, Max isn't Zan come back to life, and he isn't a legitimate son either. So he's in the succession, but after the legitimate descendents of Sanren and Alinda's younger children - like Vorjal."

"They still have the concept of illegitimate heirs?" Ava put in, frowning a bit. "I'd have thought that Antarians were a bit too enlightened to judge a child by the circumstances of his or her birth."

"I don't think that it's so much personal about kids born out of wedlock or anything," Max put in. "Just... considering that the royal heirs have a lot of power entrusted to them and responsibility, then this is a way of allowing the Royal Council of approving who are going to be the mothers (or in some cases, fathers,) of those heirs."

"You'd think that they could simply have the Council pick the most suitable of all possible heirs," Maria argued.

"And then get into cases where they'd be tempted to rule in favor of someone who's willing to offer them kickbacks," Rath said with a chuckle. "Of course, that sort of corruption is still possible at a remove - I wonder how much competition there is to provide Royal brides?"

"And how the original Ava got picked," Kyle put in. Max, Liz, Ava, and Maria all turned to glare at him. Rath chuckled softly. "Umm... well, I mean - no, never mind. Forget I opened my big stupid mouth."

"So you're going to be an illegitimate heir on Sanctuary, as well as a half-human freak?" Alex put in softly. Max shrugged.

"But we'll be together," Maria insisted. "I think that that's what matters most."

"Hey, no arguments here," Alex agreed, holding Isabel close.

#

Lonnie kissed Kyle hard and hot, pushing his body up against the wall of the small room that he shared with Michael. After a few minutes, the two of them broke apart, shifting a bit nervously and Lonnie stepped back to give the boy his personal space back.

"Okay, that pretty much pays you back for the trick you played on me during the game," Lonnie said with a half-joking tone.

"Well, that was a lot longer and... and **more** than the kiss I stole from you then," Kyle pointed out. "Not that I'm really complaining about the heat or anything, just commenting."

"Yeah, but you were kissing me for an ulterior motive, so I'm entitled to take different liberties in return," Lonnie pointed out. Kyle wasn't quite sure what sense that made, but again, wasn't too interested in complaining. "So, as much as I hate to ask... where does this leave us?"

"I... I think that we're just friends, for now," Kyle said after a moment. "Not like it could never be more, but... I do need to see how things play out with Tess. There are things that really can't be said between us until we actually meet in person again, and I'm not quite sure what all of them are going to end up being."

"Fair enough," Lonnie said. "On the other hand, don't expect me to wait around just because you're a decent kisser, Valenti."

"No, of course I wouldn't think that," he said with a small smile. "It's going to be tough enough for any of us to settle in on Vrelayan, but if you find a good opportunity, by all means go for it."

"Right." An awkward silence developed between them just at that point. "So... what now, **bud**?"

"Um, I dunno... you up for a game or something?"

"Breoll surge checkers?"

Kyle groaned. "Yeah sure, what the heck. You'll probably whip my butt again, but I'll give it my best shot."

Lonnie smirked slightly as they headed back out into the corridor.

#

Ship's personal log.

This is probably going to be the last entry that I make. Probably there'll be a lot of interesting stuff in the actual landing and what comes next, but I won't be able to really retell it while I'm still on the ship. It's been a long and pretty strange trip, over three months now since we left Earth, but I'm pretty excited.

We're back in normal space now, making orbit towards Vrelayan, and there was an unexpected bit of excitement that just finished. I'm still not clear on all of the details, but apparently a tiny little one-man fighter ship managed to find us and follow through several warp space slipstreams, in the hopes of finding the secret rebel base.

Nobody on the crew realized it until after the final jump, but Christin managed to find some way of alerting the Sanctuary defenders without letting the fighter pilot realize that he'd been spotted until it was too late. He never got a chance to broadcast a message back to Antar, and he's a prisoner now, his ship pretty well blasted. It's kind of weird to think that something we never really thought about could have started a war, or at least a battle, here on the planet that we're hoping will be a peaceful new home.

There's not much else that I can really think of putting in actually. The com system has been running pretty much all the time for the past few hours - without any need to worry much about being overheard by Kivar's people and no delay on the faster-than-light channels... we're only around four light-minutes away from Vrelayan, so not quite close enough to switch to regular radio yet. But a lot of people have suddenly wanted to talk to us, and it's been a little overwhelming for Isabel and I actually, especially when a lot of them expect the Royal Four to know who they are. (Nobody seems to have clued in that we've actually got a Royal Six on board yet.)

Oh, Alinda called as well, of course, with news that she's got course spots available for a lot of us... basics of lumitronic technology and introductory programming for me... I don't think that the visual basic and Perl stuff that I did back home is going to be too immediately relevant to their software systems. Isabel's in psych 101 and some other stuff that was recommended as good prepwork for a dreamwalk therapist. Liz is taking some introductory sciences and Max is going into a dedicated Healer's training course. I don't know if any of the others have expressed interest in schooling right away.

#

"Who first?" Michael asked from the door of his room. They had just landed, but nobody was making a move for the airlock doorway yet.

"Max, Liz, and Isabel," Christin directed without any hesitation. "Trust me on that."

So Liz held Max's hand and they led the way. Max had insisted on wearing their best things for the occasion, and the betrothal pendants were very obviously resting on both their chests.

When the outside door swung open, (the override controls engaged on the airlock for the first time since long before they had boarded, because there was no need for anybody to be worried about the air here at Landorin,) the scene that showed for them was an open landing field surrounded by buildings on all side, (at different heights and distnaces,) and about a dozen people waiting for them in the odd light of a blue-ish sunset. Liz recognized Alinda, Tess, Rayde, Vorjal, Turik, and a few others, mostly from communications beamed to the ship. And then there was the tiny little face cradled in Tess' arms. Not just a face, of course.

"Hi Max, Liz," Tess said, stepping forward after shooting a glance at Alinda. "I'd like you to meet... Joshua Sanren Evans." They'd known that she'd picked a name, but Tess had wanted to keep it a secret until the big moment, and Liz had convinced Max to go along with that. ""Josh, I'd like you to meet your Daddy and your new Mommy."

"Not... not new mommy," Liz blurted out, and then had to look at Max to see how he was reacting. Max made a 'go on' gesture, and he was smiling slightly. "An extra mommy, I'd be happy to volunteer for. But - but Max and I have talked about it, and no matter what you've done and what you thought you did, we still want you to be a part of... of Josh's life. Justice isn't higher than the bond between a mother and a child."

"Umm - wow, thanks," Tess said, stepping closer, offering Josh for Max to carefully take and hold himself, and hugging Liz. "Speaking of what I thought I did... where's Alex? I... I don't think I'll be able to really believe that he made it until I see him for myself."

"That's easily enough done," Isabel put in, stepping forward through the door and to the side, and Alex was right behind her of course. Isabel's countenance when she looked at Tess wasn't nearly as charitable as Liz felt, or how she thought Max did. But then, it wasn't so surprising that Isabel should hold a grudge for all that Tess had nearly taken away. There but for th grace of some god with an unusual sense of humour...

"Alex." To everybody's surprise, Tess dropped herself in a crumpled little heap at the boy's feet. "The humblest of possible apologies could never suffice, but I offer them as a token to begin expressing my regret," she mumbled against the tarmac. "I could see the signs of what I was turning into when I kept you at work in Las Cruces, but somehow... I didn't want to stop and let you tell the rest of the gang what had happened. And then, after I thought that you were... somehow I convinced myself that your death would have been in vain if... well, going over all of my stupid motives isn't the point. I really am sorry, and..."

"Get up, Tess." Alex's voice was a bit pitying and scornful at the same time. "Making an apoplexy of apology doesn't help, and neither does going over a litany of all your excuses." Tess looked quite ashamed as she regained her feet. "I can't forgive you yet, but I do accept your apologies. No, um - not just 'accept' like I didn't drop something that was handed to me. I **respect** the sincerity deep down in that apology, Tess." She gasped slightly. "And I respect the choices that you've made since leaving Earth even more. Everything bad that you did to me, really, was about getting off Earth or Max, or both. You've been away from Earth for a while, and now Max is here too. Was that worth it?"

You don't have to mock me," Tess grumbled feebly.

"No, he's got plenty of friends who are ready and willing to do that for him," Maria put in, stepping out herself.

"She's right, it was harsher than I wanted to be, just in this moment," Alex admitted. "As I was saying, I think you've been trying to turn your life around lately Tess, and if you keep on with that, then we'll be okay. Might take a little while."

Liz, meanwhile, thought that Tess had been the central figure of this occasion for much too long, and stepped up to Alinda. Max followed, still holding Josh in his arms and looking into his son's face. "Hello there, it's nice to see you in person at last."

"Doubly so at least on my part, dear Liz," Alinda said, embracing her. After the hug was done, she reached out to a little walking cane that had been standing on its own next to her with three little legs. "And Max... my long-lost grandson returning, or something of the sort." Max happily transferred the baby over to Liz and hugged Alinda himself. Liz was wondering if Josh would start crying with her, but he seemed quite content, if slightly sleepy.

"Well, we don't need to be standing around here," Rayde put in. "We have a transport for everybody to the Censa building, where your temporary querters are waiting."

"I don't think that any of us are eager to settle in yet," Isabel put in. "We're just coming off ship's night shift a few hours ago. We're fresh and eager to walk around on our own feet."

"That is... if there's no great security risk with that," Max put in cautiously.

"Don't think we need to get too cautious, Rayde," Vorjal put in - or at least Liz thought he was the prince of the Liaret family in exile. "This neighborhood has always been friendly to us."

Liz passed Josh back to Tess and headed up to Vorjal. "Your highness... we haven't had an opportunity to really meet over the comunicator."

"My Lady Parker," Vorjal said, pressing two fingers to his lips and then her wrist in a courtly sign of respect that she remembered from her reading on board the ship. "Welcome to Sanctuary, Landorin, and Vrelayan, and may I congratulate you and Max on your engagement?"

Liz suddenly burst out into slightly nervous laughter, which clearly startled Prince Vorjal more than a little, and he turned to Max looking for an explanation. Max just shrugged slightly. "Umm... sorry, that just reminded me of something my mother always used to say - you should never congratulate the bride or bride-to-be, that makes it sound like she was lucky or desperate to 'nab' a husband - you just say 'best wishes' instead. It was somehow okay to congratulate the groom, though."

"Well, I certainly have plenty of positive wishes to offer both of you," Vorjal replied, chuckling a bit deep in his throat and leading a course away from the ship - all ten passengers, plus Christin, had emerged from the airlock doors by now. The regular crew were probably staying on to make sure that everything was put to rights in their wake. "And I have a lot of questions for you guys about your experiences on Earth. I haven't been anywhere quite so... so alien, but I sort of grew up on the run from Kivar's various hunting parties. Tess and I have already compared our notes a few times."

"Okay, sure," Max said, smiling slightly. Vorjal was apparently about five years older than they were, differences in species notwithstanding, but it was hard not to feel an affinity for him. "And we have a lot of questions to ask too."

"Sure. There's time."

Liz had hoped that they'd actually get to a city sidewalk or lane, but instead it seemed as if they were heading for an underground tunnel. "I don't suppose you've heard anything new from Earth?"

"Actually, yes!" Rayde put in. "It just arrived about an... an hour ago. Here." She reached into her severe jumpsuit and provided a small slip of white plastic to hand to Liz. "Your parents walked right up to one of our observers and handed it to him. They couldn't read the writing well enough to understand the message, but they transmitted it in.

"What?" Max hurried over to stand near Liz. How had her family recognized aliens on sight? Had Valenti been able to pick up on some clue and told them? Why hadn't Valenti been the one to make a move then? Had he been too cautious to draw any attention to them?

Liz shrugged slightly at Max and opened up the slip. The handwriting was definitely a bit messy, but Liz had had practice with her mother's scrawl. 'We miss you, but we understand. Have a great trip, and come home when you can. Give Max and Maria my best. Mom.'

Liz looked around the alien city for a moment before starting down the stairs to the tunnel then considered her friends, and Tess, and Max's son. No matter how strange things were, she knew she'd be okay.

"Lead on, your highness."


End file.
